


The Girl With a Star-Spangled Heart

by PeggyPincurls, WickedKitteh



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Artist Steve Rogers, Awesome Peggy Carter, BAMF Peggy Carter, Bucky Barnes Returns, Everybody Lives, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Peggy Carter Lives, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Peggy Carter, Protective Steve Rogers, SHIELD Agent Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers Feels, Team as Family, Time Travel Fix-It, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2018-09-09 01:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 49,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8870908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeggyPincurls/pseuds/PeggyPincurls, https://archiveofourown.org/users/WickedKitteh/pseuds/WickedKitteh
Summary: Peggy Carter was left in a world without Steve Rogers...and a lifetime later, Steve Rogers has awoken to a world without Peggy Carter, with nothing to remember her by but a photo on a Wall of Valor and an agency whose mission is to carry on her legacy after her mysterious disappearance.  Even his compass--and the picture of her inside--is no longer in his possession, permanently propped open at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.Tony isn't too worried about that, though.  He's sure he can find a photo of Peggy among his late father's things.  There's got to be one.  And if not, maybe he can find one some other way.  Anything, he reasons, to help Steve see his best girl again.  Right?





	1. Prologues: Good Night, Daniel/I Had A Date/The Longest Winter

**Author's Note:**

> OK. My previous stories might not always have made the most sense, insofar as they all take place in an alternate universe that throws characters together in timelines and spaces not exactly consistent to the MCU. But I also promised to explain. This is (hopefully) that explanation.
> 
> To say I have taken liberties with timelines, events and locations in the MCU is a massive, massive understatement, which is why this is labeled an Alternate Universe story. Please keep that in mind should you choose to proceed. 
> 
> That being said, some things to note:
> 
> -This story takes place in New York, and to that purpose there are characters residing there and working there who might, in MCU canon, be ordinarily residing and working other places. This was done to include them due to my own affection for them and for the City of New York, my home.  
> -This story takes place in the present day, to avoid too many anachronisms, most specifically with popular culture and with current technology.  
> -This story begins to diverge from MCU canon directly following the events of _Avengers_ , although it borrows elements and events from both _The Winter Soldier_ and _Civil War_. References may likely be made to any or all of the _Iron Man_ films as well.  
>  -That being said, this story is _not_ , I repeat _**not** Civil War_ compliant. It's not even fully _Winter Soldier_ compliant.  
>  -References may be made to characters, places or incidents from the timeline of _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D._ , but that will probably be limited to its first season as that is what I am most familiar with.  
> -There have been liberties taken with the timeline directly following the conclusion of _Agent Carter_ , and begins to diverge from that canon directly before the final episodes of season 2. However, the entirety of season 1 and parts of season 2 will likely be referenced in the text.  
> -There may be some references or allusions to current events contained in this story, solely because I found them useful vehicles for the plot. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.  
> -The idea for this story came from, I kid you not, _Avengers Academy_. I hoped against hope that they would introduce Peggy Carter--and then they _did_ (I shrieked out in the middle of DragonCon, "They read my Twitter!" then ran right out and made the dress for New York Comic Con)! And I was overjoyed, and my imagination ran away with me. This story (and all the other stories that are already posted/will be posted along this headcanon, including the three I already have up) is the result.
> 
> I point out all this because, I'm just trying to have some fun here. I like telling stories, and I'm having fun telling this one, so I'm trying to be as plain as I can about the canon divergences and hope you'll be as forgiving of them, should this story entertain you, Reader.
> 
> OK. I think that's it. Have fun--I am.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good night, Daniel...
> 
> Steve Rogers isn't sleeping well.
> 
> And it's been a very long winter.

_That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day._  


**(Charles Dickens, _Great Expectations_ )**

**

**Prologue: Good Night, Daniel**

**

_Good night, sweetheart, till we meet tomorrow_  
_Good night, sweetheart, sleep will banish sorrow_  
_Tears and parting may make us forlorn_  
_But with the dawn a new day is born_  
_So I'll say good night, sweetheart, thought I'm not beside you_  
_Good night, sweetheart, still my love will guide you_  
_Dreams enfold you, and in each one I'll hold you_  
_Good night, sweetheart, good night_

**(Bing Crosby, _Good Night Sweetheart_ )**

**

_New York City, 1947_

**

It was very late, but once she had gotten started, it had been hard to stop. 

The office space was wonderful—Howard had been a huge help with that, securing the top floor of one of the buildings he owned. It got a lot of light, which she liked, and was mostly open-plan save for the little glassed-in office that had been designated as hers. However, right now she was sitting at one of the desks they'd pushed into the center of the floor, one of the few that wasn't covered in office supplies or boxes of files. She'd been hard at work until the evening, but now she was almost dreamily whiling away the hours sketching ideas for her (she was already, in a motherly and somehow possessive manner, thinking of it as "hers") new agency's insignia. She was pretty sure she'd come up with a fairly decent symbol, both an homage to the past as well as a newer outlook for the future, although it had been hard to stop her mind from wandering; the margins of the paper she drew on had become crowded with memories--the SSR's insignia, the Union Jack, the American flag, lipstick tubes...and a certain shield that kept haunting her dreams. She left off that for the moment, darkening the tip of the wing she'd sketched idly on her most prominent idea, which had pride of place within a circle at the center of the page.

"What do you think?" Peggy Carter asked, sensing a presence behind her. A smile played around her lips; she didn't turn to see who was there—she didn't have to. Only one other person besides her was dedicated—or foolish—enough to work this late.

"Is it an eagle?" There was a friendly curiosity in his voice as he braced a hand on her desk and leaned over her. 

Peggy smirked ruefully and went to crumple up the paper she had been sketching on. "Point taken. I'll start over."

"Hey, don't!" He snatched the paper away from her, leaving her holding just the pencil. He smoothed out what few crinkles she had managed to make in it, taking a closer look at the symbol she'd sketched out within the circle—a blockier, starker version of the SSR's eagle, wings spread wide. "I think it's great. It's...kind of a tougher version of what we had for the SSR."

Peggy propped her chin on her hands, looking amused. "Not so tough if you had to phrase your guess as a question. Maybe I should hire a real artist to come up with something."

"You could, if you wanted. You've got enough to do," he agreed. "Know any good artists?"

Peggy's gaze flickered to the paper in his hand. Her companion's eyes followed hers, noticing for the first time that the central design that they had been discussing was surrounded by smaller images, rejected ideas maybe, or doodled musings. He began to pick out certain designs and caught a glimpse of a familiar set of concentric circles, the star in its center. The Captain's shield—somehow it never seemed too far from Peggy's thoughts.

"I did," Peggy said, very softly, her eyes faraway and distant. "But I've not heard from him since before the war ended."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he answered kindly, looking away from the paper. "Missing in action?"

Peggy looked up, a serenity coming over her face. "I like to think so, yes."

Her companion frowned slightly, not taking her meaning—he was unsure how being MIA could be seen as a favorable option, but he did not press her further, not with that fragile look on her face. Instead, he walked around her desk—that is to say he limped around it; Daniel Sousa had been injured in the war and had never regained full use of his leg. Pulling a chair away from another desk in the little bullpen they had set up, he took a seat across from Peggy, resting his metal crutch carefully against the chair and putting her drawing on the desk between them.

"Don't be too hard on yourself," he said, a little smile playing around his lips. "You've been busy."

Peggy sighed. "We've still much to do."

"Peggy," Daniel argued gently, catching her dark eyes with his own. "This is a hell of a step up from taking lunch orders. When the SSR was compromised, who led the charge to salvage what we could from the ashes? Who took on the task of vetting a new team of agents? Who's been working overtime getting training protocols in place? They're going to be good, Peggy. They've got fire in their guts and radar in their eyes, and that's because of you. You're the example they're working to live up to, and when they needed someone to take the helm of this... _idea_...and make it into a reality, did they ask me? Did they ask any of the men who'd been throwing their weight around the SSR to do it? No. They asked you," he concluded, pride in his eyes. "And you've hit the ground running."

Peggy waved an elegantly manicured hand, not wanting to let on that she enjoyed the praise, her red-polished nails shining in the dim glow of the overhead lights. "Nonsense. Someone had to start, and this is truly going to be a team effort. It's...it's the least I can do. Just because the war is over does not mean we can rest on our laurels. Someone must stand guard. Someone must...be the beacon."

She looked out towards the windows, to the lights of New York City, and it was clear to him what she was thinking about. He had long since resigned himself to the fact that there would not be a day she didn't think about it...about _him._

Before he had decided between offering comfort or asking questions, Peggy visibly composed herself. "I must say, Daniel, I truly appreciate you taking the time to come back here and help me get things in order. I know you've got your own work back on the opposite coast."

"Are you kidding? I wouldn't miss this for the world. I'd be a fool to pass up an opportunity to make history with the best agent in the field." Daniel smiled, leaning back in his chair. "But if you really want to know, Peg...I may have had an ulterior motive for signing on."

Peggy blinked, apparently not having expected this turn of the conversation. Brow furrowing slightly, she said, "Why, Daniel, if you wanted a position in the agency, you know you need only ask. We would be lucky to have you, to be honest, and you are certainly qualified. I simply assumed you would not want to abandon your command position in Los Angeles, given all the time and effort you have put into that achievement, but if that is not the case—"

Daniel laughed, and he was aware of the tone his laughter had taken--a little affectionate, and yet...a little bitter. "That...ah...that wasn't what I meant, exactly."

Peggy arched a brow.

With a smile just as fond and tinged with bitterness as his laugh had been, he leaned forward. "Don't you ever...switch off?"

Peggy chuckled. "Daniel, you make it sound as though I don't ever do anything but work."

"Do you?" His expression grew serious, his brows raised. "I wasn't kidding when I listed all the stuff you've been busting your hump for to give this agency a fresh start—and that's probably only a quarter of what you've actually been doing. You give a hundred and ten percent, all the time, in everything you do. And that's admirable—It really is; I doubt you'd be the woman you are today if you didn't. But, Peggy..." His dark eyes fixed earnestly on hers, and he leaned closer to her. "...you're allowed to have a life."

Peggy only met that solemn gaze for a moment, then turned away, her expression softening as she looked once more out into the lights of the city, her laughter having faded into that faraway thoughtfulness. "I do have a life, Daniel, and I intend to live it. I only regret that there were so many who weren't allowed to live theirs."

He sensed once more he was losing her to the past; he threw out a last desperate lure. "Have you come up with a name, then? For your life's work?"

She actually smiled then, a wise look in her eyes, her head tilted with pride. Daniel saw for a moment what the soldiers must have seen in the war—the satin and fire over a core of steel. Her eyes flickered down to the paper between them, a fondness permeating her expression as her fingertips ran over the symbol—not the one she had drawn in the center, not the eagle but the familiar concentric circles in the margin, the star. _His_ star.

"I was thinking... _SHIELD._ "

Daniel shook his head, unable to stop a rueful smile of his own. A shield, indeed—and one she would likely always put between herself and the rest of the world. 

Peggy's eyes were bright with pride and sorrow, the glitter in them looking suspiciously like tears, but she shook it away and drummed her fists on the desk lightly. "But, you're right about one thing. This design needs work—but not tonight. I think I am ready to pack it in for a while."

"Are you sure?" he asked, standing along with her. "I mean—I don't mean stay here. I mean, we could go get a drink somewhere."

"Oh, I appreciate the offer, Daniel, but I'm quite tired," she said. "After all, the general consensus around here seems to be that I am overworked." Her long eyelashes flickered in a wink, and his spirits lifted considerably; it was not like her to be so playful, not that he was complaining. 

"Yeah, but it'll be worth it. It's going to be something, Peggy," he told her, admiration warming his voice. The past was in the past; it was time to start thinking about the future, and he wanted her to know he was ready to face it with her. "I think it's really going to be something."

Peggy let a smile barely touch her lips, that sadness still glimmering in her dark eyes. "Let's hope for that."

He walked her to the elevator, and just as it was arriving, she turned. "Bloody hell, I've forgotten my hat. I must truly be tired. I think I've left it on the coat rack in my office."

"I'll get it for you," Daniel offered, shifting his crutch, but Peggy was faster, already heading back into the bullpen, her stylish blue heels clicking on the tiled floor in the quiet office.

"Nonsense. Go," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "You've been running around all day. I'll be right behind you. Go and have a good night, and I shall see you in the morning."

Again, he shook his head with that rueful, admiring smile—she never wanted anyone to do anything for her that she knew she could do herself, even something as simple as fetching her hat. Just before the elevator doors closed, he took a risk and called out, "Hey Peg, maybe tomorrow you'll let me talk you into that drink."

She emerged from the bullpen, hat on her head, and turned to face him. "Let's see, shall we?" she said amiably, and then a smile broke out on her face, almost a laugh, as the elevator doors began to close between them, cutting off her farewell. "Good night, Daniel."

The elevator doors shut completely, hiding her from view, but it was a striking sendoff—Agent Carter in one of her immaculately tailored suits, the bold blue of the American flag, her red lips curved in a smile, red hat cocked smartly atop her glossy dark curls. The founder of SHIELD.

It was a scene Daniel Sousa played over and over in his head in the years to come, for he never saw Peggy Carter again. 

In fact, for a very long time, no one did.

**

** Prologue: I Had a Date **

**

_Broken watch you gave me turns into a compass_  
_Its two hands still point to the same time, 12:03_  
_Our last goodbye._

**(Thursday, _Understanding in a Car Crash_ )**

_"Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world."_

**(Thomas Hardy, _Jude the Obscure_ )**

**

_New York City, 2016_

**

_Outside the smeary cockpit glass, the world was a white wasteland. His gaze flickered to something much friendlier in these last moments--the compass he had propped on the instrument panel, open to show him his True North. "Peggy."_

_" **I'm here.** "_

_"I'm gonna need a rain check on that dance."_

_He heard her take a breath, could picture her face as she fought to calm herself. " **All right. A week next Saturday, at the Stork Club.** "_

_Oh, how he wanted it. "You've got it."_

_"You know..." There was nothing visible out the cockpit glass now but blankness. His future. "I still don't know how to dance."_

_Peggy's voice was shaky, and he loathed himself for putting the tears in her eyes he could hear were there. " **I'll show you how. Just be there.**"_

_He had no idea how much longer they had, and he felt the ice had him in its grip already, his chest tight and cold, thinking of all the time they would **never** have. "We'll have the band play something slow," he said, fixing his gaze on the compass, the photo. Her face. He would take that with him into eternity, he vowed._

_The aircraft shuddered with the impact, but that somehow seemed a thousand miles away, now. Her dark eyes and subtly pretty smile filled the world as he said, "I'd hate to step on your--"_

_And then there was nothing at all._

**

Steve Rogers woke with a harsh gasp, sitting upright in bed in a cold sweat, a sheet twisted around his muscular torso. He had managed not to scream her name this time, although he wasn't always so lucky when it came to that. 

Exhaling a long, shuddering breath, he swung his legs over the side of his bed and leaned over, resting his elbows on his knees, running a hand through his sweaty blond hair.

It had been so long. So long...but still, the dreams persisted, and he knew it was because they weren't dreams but memories. 

He did not, he reminded himself for what felt like the millionth time, regret his actions during the war, not even on that last fateful day. He had done what he had known was necessary to save the lives of millions of people. 

He only regretted leaving _her._

Shaking his head, he fought the familiar tightness in his chest, the gray despair that washed over him every night this happened, the tears that always threatened when he remembered her face, her voice. The past was in the past; what was done was done and could not be undone. 

And she was gone.

Scrubbing his face with his hands, he remembered the first time he had woken from that cold dream—back when it had been a reality. When the white, blank wasteland of his future was replaced with a glittering neon cacophony, and he had stood in the center of a screaming, crowded nightmare where none of the faces were the one he had dreamed of all that time.

" _At ease, soldier! I'm sorry about that little show back there, but we thought it best to break it to you slowly,_ " Nick Fury had said, with that maddening air of calm certainty in his actions.

Steve had felt the chill of the glacier again, all over his body; he had known what was coming, somehow. " _Break what_?"

" _You've been asleep, Cap. For almost seventy years_."

He remembered wishing, for one hopeless moment, that he had in fact died that day in the ice. He remembered wondering if he had, and if there was such a thing as hell, and if the brightly colored, flashing, noisy, busy street he was on was it. That had been before he had learned, and learned well, that hell did exist, and it was not a place, but something he carried around with him. Every day. 

" _You gonna be OK_?"

And the lie came out of his mouth for the first time, the standard response he would give every time he was asked that question ever after. " _Yeah._ "

" _Yeah, I just..._ "

He looked up, staring bleakly into the darkness of his room, broken only by the moonlight through his window. "...I had a date," he whispered to the post-nightmare gloom.

Squinting, he put his face in his hands, hiding for one final moment, fighting the urge to break down completely. There would be no comfort, and no sleep—he knew that from many, many nights just like this one, where he escaped the ice's grip once more in memory and spent the silent hours till dawn wandering through an emotional graveyard full of his own ghosts, where every headstone was chiseled with her name, and every face carved out of marble was hers.

**

** Prologue: The Longest Winter **

**

_Mother Russia, badly burned_  
_Your children lick your wounds,_  
_Your wounds._

_Pilgrim father sailed away,_  
_Found a brave new world,_  
_New world._

**(Tears for Fears, _Listen_ )**

**

_An unknown place, an unknown time_

**

Howl of wind. 

Clacking and screeching of train wheels on a track. 

Even in the dark and the quiet, the memory of these sounds. 

Sometimes, and it wasn't often, bits and pieces would come back to him, but they were useless, like a child's jigsaw puzzle someone had dashed on the floor. None of the images on any of the pieces was complete; he would see color but not shape. One piece looked like the silky pelt of an animal, but while the texture was of fur or hair the color was all wrong, a blond not found in the animal kingdom. One piece looked like a contrast of red on red, satin on gabardine. An eye, the clear, blameless blue of a spring sky, fringed by thick lashes. One piece looked like carnival lights, one piece like snow. A sort of patch, the tip of a wing against weathered blue wool. The barest corner of a smile on red, red lips. He would reach, in his mind, for the pieces in an attempt to put them back together again, but in the vision he always drew back before he touched them because...

...one of his hands...

...one of his hands was...

...wrong.

He _knew_ it was wrong, but he didn't know _how_ he knew it. 

Better to just sink back down into the dark. The cold. 

Before the voices started.

That was always the worst part. The puzzle pieces would start whispering... the images in them moving. The face that wore the red red smile would turn away, revealing a brief glimpse of dark eyes, dark curls, a murmur of _After this...I might even go...dancing..._

The carnival lights would begin to flicker and twinkle. He could hear the calliope music, the rattle and clack of a roller coaster on its track, smell popcorn and frying dough, taste cotton candy on his tongue. 

The blue eye would blink, and he'd hear an echoing declaration of _I'm with you...till the end of the line, pal._

But they never told him their names. 

They never told him _his_ name.

And then the snow again, the howl of the blizzard, the thickness of it falling in the puzzle piece his eyes always seemed to rest on in the end.

Better to stay in the dark. Better to stay where it was safe, where those whispering puzzle pieces fell silent, where the incomplete movies playing over and over on them on a loop halted. Where there was nothing left--nothing, that was, but the two constants, the discordia that he somehow knew had led to where he was right now.

Forever.

Howl of wind.

Clacking and screeching of train wheels on a track.

Even in the dark and the quiet, the memory of these sounds.

Until...

_желание...ржaвый...Семнадцать...Рассвет..._

**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wouldn't be going anywhere without wickedkitteh, who has basically been talking me down off the bridge railing for the last month or so. I really appreciate her help, because I wouldn't get a single bloody thing done on paper without her guidance. 
> 
> Notes on "The Longest Winter" section: For those unaware, the Russian at the end of this section translates (if my research is correct) to: longing ( _желание_ ), rusted ( _ржaвый_ ), seventeen ( _Семнадцать_ ), daybreak ( _Рассвет_ ). Please forgive any errors as I have no knowledge of speaking Russian. This can be viewed as a mild spoiler for _Civil War_ , but has very little to do with the plot of the film itself due to aforementioned divergence. 
> 
> This is not the end of the "prologue" sections, either.


	2. Prologues: A Flash In The Pan/Meet Me In The Red Room/The Wonder Of The World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howard Stark can't bear to see his friend suffer any longer.
> 
> Natasha Romanoff is thinking about the one that got away.
> 
> And Steve Rogers has more in common with Bruce Banner than he realizes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had no idea the _prologues_ were going to be this extensive. I'm almost scared for when the wheels are actually up.

**

** Prologue: A Flash In The Pan **

**

_She cries when she's alone, for all life's little knocks_  
_Everything's supposed to make us tougher ___  
_Thinking it doesn't really show, but I know how she hurts_  
_And I can't bear to see her suffer_  
_Because she's everything, and I don't think she knows._  
_I don't think she knows._

**(Duran Duran, _She's Too Much_ )**

__**_ _

_New York City, 1947_

__**_ _

She didn't know he knew, but he knew. 

He knew all of it. 

He had known even before she'd shot the shield, before the jokes about fondue, before any of it. He had seen the looks, the longing, that had flashed between them like heat lightning. 

And he knew now, how she hurt, how it ached, where she went when she disappeared during the day and what she was doing there. 

Her face was shadowed in the right places. 

It was infrequent, but he was a scientist and patterns always made themselves apparent to him. They—he, Peggy, Daniel Sousa, the revolving door of new trainees and holdover agents who were helping them with their endeavor—would accomplish something truly noteworthy, congratulate each other, and they would know whatever they had done was a huge step forward in the continuing fight for right and good, with the agency they were helping Peggy rebuild. She would glow with triumph, a small, satisfied smile on her face...and then, at some point during the day, she would slip away. 

It was never for very long, and she always came back as polished and poised as ever, every curl smoothed, lipstick perfect, but he knew. And it was because he knew that he never chased her; she needed that time to herself and herself alone. 

To feel. 

To cry. 

He hated that she needed that time. He hated that she felt she had to keep it secret, although he knew why she did so. And he hated that none of the hands that were reaching to help her forge her future were Steve's. 

But not for long. 

Not if Howard Stark had anything to say about it. 

Joining the growing list of things Howard knew was that his exhaustion was beginning to show. Along with all the work he was doing to help Peg in her new endeavor, from securing her the office space to outfitting the agency to coming up with new tech for the team of trainees she would eventually tin as full-fledged agents, he had a secret project he was devoting any time he could spare to and not a single one of his friends or colleagues, not even his trusted butler, Edwin Jarvis, knew about it. 

Unbeknownst to Peggy, it was she herself who had given him the idea. 

" _We have time_ ," she had pleaded with Steve on that last, horrible transmission. Howard had managed to obtain a recording of it. Peggy did not know this, and he planned never to tell her, but nor did he plan to destroy the recording—whenever he felt weary, useless, or that he would never be able to locate Steve and bring him home, or even find a body so that the soldier could get a proper burial and his loved ones— _Peggy_ —could have closure, he would play the recording back to remind himself why this was so important. 

Hearing the pain, the heartbreak, in Peggy's voice over that recording was enough to spur him to try again. 

" _We'll figure something out,_ " she had said to Steve that last night. " _We have time_." 

Time. 

That was the spark that had ignited the flame in his mind. Time. He was Howard Stark. He was no super soldier, but he could bend physics, metal, electricity to his will simply by his ingenuity and his handiness. 

What was left for him to conquer but time? 

_I could_ , he had thought the first instance it had occurred to him. _If **anyone** could... **I** could. That last night—all I would have to do is tell him to wait. To give me an hour—half of that—a quarter. To let me help him defuse that payload, find a safer place to drop it, send an evac. To hold on until I get there. To hold on, and then come home to us. Come home to her. _

Howard had, before doing anything else, figured out all three of those scenarios. Meticulously studying the movements of the SSR on that mission, he figured out how to have someone in position to pick up the Captain upon his abandoning the enemy craft. He scouted not one but two acceptable places to safely bury the killing payload Steve had sacrificed himself to disarm. And he collected all available information the SSR had on the object, coming up with every possible option he could fathom for defusing it once and for all before it was too late. 

There were other scenarios, of course, and Howard Stark made plans in the event of them all—sending backup with the Captain on that last mission, intercepting the Skull at an earlier moment—but those three were the big ones, and he wanted to be ready for the moment his true objective was gained. If this worked— 

—no. 

_When_ it worked— 

— _when_ it worked, he wanted to be ready. He knew, from a lifetime of trial and error and a war that had proven it beyond all shadow of doubt, that it might happen when he least expected it and thus he might only have one shot at reaching his goal. He wouldn't fail either one of them again—not Steve, not Peggy. He would be ready, and he would make it right, _this_ time. 

Time. 

_That_ was Howard Stark's secret project. By day, he was working to help Peggy give her new agency a bright future. By night, he worked feverishly to undo the dark tragedies of the past. 

_I can do this_ , he told himself for the thousandth time, looking over his notes. _I can do this, and I'll bring him home. And if I can't do that, I'll bring him **here**. Now. I'll make it right. I'll make it right..._

He would take that wounded look off Peggy's lovely face, the tears out of her eyes and the scars off of her heart. And he would make up for every time he had failed Steve, failed to reliably protect him. 

_I can do this. I **can** do this. **I can.**_

Howard pushed his hair, which had been thickened by sweat along with a few days of poor hygiene and worse sleep into a series of peaks and horns, back from his brow and loosened the top two buttons on his wrinkled dress shirt. His tie was skew-whiff at his neck, but the trouble of unknotting it and taking it off seemed too time-consuming when he had such important matters at hand. He lit another cigarette instead and went back to his notes. 

He'd realized that thanks to his hovercars, he had had most of what he thought he needed already on hand. He had managed, he thought, to get the superconductors he'd yanked from the cars—previously being used to generate an electromagnetic field that would repel the vehicle from the earth, strongarming gravity and causing the car to hover without the use of dangerous thrusters or any kind of jet propulsion—on the proper frequency that he _hoped_ would generate what Einstein had referred to as a "wormhole"—a bending of the electromagnetic fields in a way that would allow him to tunnel, in a sense, back to the night that Steve had disappeared. 

It had taken several attempts to figure out exactly what frequency was the one he needed the superconductors set on to do what he was hoping they could do, and now he had them all pinged to yet another, safely encased in a large box comprised of bulletproof glass, the better to see the effect of his tinkering without being at immediate risk should the results be concussive. Turning the dial reminded him of the World's Fair, and how proud and cocky he'd been showing off that car, never knowing how incredibly important that idea and its components would become to him—and to the future. Not just the vague chrome and neon future he'd bragged about ushering in on that brightly lit platform, but a much more personal future—Peggy's future, Steve's future, America's future, the _world's_ future. 

"Einstein was a flash in the pan," he muttered, and flicked the switch. 

**

**Prologue: Meet You In the Red Room**

**

_You never can win, it's the state I'm in_  
_The danger thrills and my conflict kills_  
_They say follow your heart, follow it through_  
_But how can you when you're split in two?_

**(Siouxsie and the Banshees, _Face to Face_ )**

**

_New York City, 2016_

**

"Oh man," he groaned beneath her in the afterglow of his orgasm. "I love you." 

Natasha Romanoff sighed through her nose. "Oh, please." 

He reached up to stroke down her arms, caress her breasts, and she fought an urge to yawn. She remembered his name—she wasn't that big of a cliche—but she didn't care to say it. 

Until he got to her abdomen, and the scar that tattooed it, just above her hip. 

"What's this?" he asked, tracing the raised, bumpy starburst on her skin. "It's a— _ahhhaaaaaaaaa_!" 

Natasha had grabbed his wrist and bent it back. Her movements were calm and unhurried, almost casual, despite the pain she knew she was inflicting. 

"It's not the only one I have," she murmured, almost to herself, "but it's the one everyone asks about." 

"L-let go!" 

She did, and he tore his wrist out of her grasp, chuckling nervously as if he wanted to believe the whole thing was a joke. "What the hell is wrong with you?" 

"Where do I begin?" Natasha leaned back atop him, shaking her sex-tangled red hair over her shoulders to give him a better view of her breasts. They were always a great distraction when she didn't feel like talking anymore. 

His Ivy League smile, 88 keys of completely guileless interest in her, spread over his face again, as if he had already forgotten the pain she had inflicted on him. Maybe he had. 

_It didn't leave a scar_ , she thought absently, _so therefore, no one's hurt._

"I can't believe this," he said in unabashed pride in himself as he caressed the breasts she'd offered him. "No one's going to believe a girl who looks like you came home with me. It's like something out of a movie. What do you do for a living? Do you model?" 

Natasha counted herself lucky that no portion of her anatomy could visibly betray the second she lost the last shred of interest in her current companion. "I'm a spy," she said flatly. "And if life were a movie, this would be the opening scene to introduce my character. The stereotypical Russian spy, the femme fatale, in bed with her latest conquest. Or is it… _target_? Maybe the camera pans over to a bloodstain on the sheets...on the pillows." 

His smile was starting to fade again, but she tried the anxious laugh once more. "I guess I'm lucky this isn't a movie, then." 

Natasha smiled silkily. "I guess you are." She languidly dismounted him, sliding off and out of the bed with easy grace. She began searching for her clothes on the way to the bathroom, picking up her camisole off the floor and discovering her panties closer to the door. 

Shutting the bathroom door delivered a welcome measure of privacy. Stepping gracefully into the shower, she twisted the tap, hearing muffled protests from the room beyond, entreaties to come back to bed. Rummaging through the shower caddy propped in a corner of the bath, she found shampoo and made use of an almost-new bar of soap. 

She swiped over the scar with the soap, lathering. Once. Twice. 

The memory was a scar, too. Just, in her mind, not on her body. 

She'd caught a glimpse of his eyes for one second. Just one. He'd smeared the skin around his eyes with lampblack to offer him additional camouflage over the wicked-looking facemask that had obscured his nose and mouth. Smart—it wouldn't have done for even the stingiest light to reflect off sweaty skin to give his position away. And those eyes had burned from the dark shadows on his face, pale and wild, a blizzard howling in them. 

And then the shot. 

Pain and pain and pain, spreading like a solar flare from its origin point in her abdomen. She had been able to study it objectively—she had been trained to do that—but _oh_ that hadn't meant it didn't _hurt_. 

And her engineer— _her_ mission—had been dead, slumped beneath her. 

And those _eyes_. He could have finished it then, and they had both known it—but he had melted back into the shadows he'd sprung from, his mission complete. He had given her back her life, and she had lay there in pain and disgust across the body of the dead engineer, writhing in agony from the gunshot—and from how easily he had defused her and then dismissed her. As if she had been merely a thorn in his path, something to step on and be irritated by, then forget. 

Those _eyes_. 

Closing her own, Natasha allowed herself a moment to remember those wild wild eyes, hating them for how blankly they had rested on her—victory had been his but he had given her back her life, he had _dismissed her_ —and marveling at the knowledge of how soon she would forget the man in the room beyond, the man she had so recently let have her, but those eyes would follow her forever. She knew that now. 

Those cursed eyes. 

Shaking back her wet red hair as she walked back into the bedroom, shrugging into her camisole, panties already on, she restarted the quest for her clothes. Jeans on the chair. There'd been a sweater, but she didn't care enough to hunt for it. Her jacket was hanging on the hook in the entryway; she'd get it on the way out. 

"Look, I'm sorry if I brought up something upsetting," the man said, sitting up in bed. "You don't have to go." 

"Actually, I do," Natasha said, pulling on one of her boots. "I have to be up early tomorrow." She glanced at the clock. "Today. I've got to work." 

He sighed, scrubbing his face with his hands tiredly as he watched her move around the room. "Oh, yeah, you mentioned that. Seriously, what do you do, again?" 

Natasha speared him with a look. Pulled on the other boot. 

Did not answer. 

Left the room. 

**

**Prologue: The Wonder Of The World**

**

_The wonder of the world is gone, I know for sure_  
_All the wonder that I want I found in her._

**(Finger Eleven, _Slow Chemical_ )**

**

_New York City, 2016_

**

"And then," Tony Stark said pleasantly, "if you do all that properly, it'll explode, and take out you, Romanoff and a city block." 

Seated beside Tony, Pepper Potts rolled her eyes and sighed. 

Steve Rogers looked up, glaring at Tony out of eyes that were bloodshot and socketed in bruisy shadows. "Cut the crap, Stark." 

"Just wanted to see if you were paying attention, Spangles. You look like you're a thousand miles away." Tony did in fact think this, and was concerned, but pride dictated that he couldn't ask Steve what was wrong outright. He had to tease him a bit and drag it out of him, or else the balance of power would shift. 

"I think I have to agree with Tony," Bruce Banner said slowly, as if he were unsure it was wise to voice his opinion. "You don't look so good, Steve." 

"I'm sorry. My hair and makeup team wasn't available on such short notice," Steve muttered, looking back down at the cooling cup of coffee he had accepted from Pepper but not drunk. "Can we get on with this, please?" 

Natasha Romanoff, the last person in attendance, allowed her brow to arch at the sarcasm, which always interested her when it was coming from Steve, who had a tendency to speak plainly. However, she limited her response to, "It'd be nice if I felt confident you were retaining any of this, Rogers, because it's my ass on the line along with yours." 

"I've got it," Steve challenged. "You're doing most of the heavy lifting anyway. They're only sending me because I speak better Russian than Clint." 

"They're sending you because you know the layout of the goddamned castle," Natasha said. "And your Russian is _eh_ at best. That's why your cover story is that you're a mason from Germany, brought in to restore the original facade of the building. If they really are smuggling nuclear material to sell it on the black market, it's not going to be in the broom closet. It's going to be in one of the bunkers they used during the war." 

"There aren't any bunkers on the schematics," Bruce pointed out, "but I'm sure you know it wasn't uncommon to leave them out on purpose to conceal them from the opposing army. That's where this comes in." 

Banner took out what looked like a small remote control, a plastic housing with rounded edges, set with an LCD screen and a keypad. 

"Why is it yellow?" Natasha asked. "That looks stupid." 

"It is yellow because it looks stupid," Banner said, which sounded like he was parroting her until he explained further: "You're going to be carrying this around with you, Natasha, pretending it's a wi-fi tester. It's actually a Geiger counter. If there are nuclear materials on site, this will pick them up. Wi-fi testers are bright colors, so I thought I'd make this follow suit to help your cover." 

Natasha took the Geiger counter. "Give me a rundown. Rogers, pay attention, in case you need to know this, too." 

"Why would a mason—" 

"Rogers. Pay attention." 

Steve crossed his arms over his chest, sighing through his nose, but listened to the impromptu tutorial. 

Pepper, who wasn't going on the mission, didn't need to know anything about Geiger counters or wi-fi testers that she couldn't get out of Tony or Bruce at her leisure, and who had a soft spot for Steve Rogers, took the time to look him over while this was happening. Tony and Bruce had both been kind; in her opinion, Steve didn't just look tired or preoccupied. He looked downright terrible. 

Terrible for him, anyway. It was pretty hard for the super soldier to truly look terrible. He was heartbreakingly handsome—strong jaw, chiseled cheek, thickly-lashed eyes as blue as a spring sky, and a body that would have made the Virgin Mary throw in the towel. She knew that he hadn't always been so strong, that the serum had forged him into the man who would be Captain America, but she also knew that he worked hard to keep himself battle ready and fit—she was the one who replaced all the sandbags he spent his down time punching into oblivion and all the weight machines that couldn't stand up to his strength. 

But today the dark lashes kept drooping; the blue eyes were overcast. The smudgy shadows under them looked like bruises, and the strong line of his jaw melted a little with fatigue. His fair hair, usually adorably tousled and styled with the high-end pomade she herself had gently convinced him to switch his heavy Brylcreem for, was oily and sticking up all over like the down on a chick, either because he hadn't combed it or had simply been running his fingers through it incessantly. Possibly both. 

Pepper knew Steve suffered from nightmares frequently, and did not sleep well as a general rule. If anyone had a right to post-traumatic stress disorder, it was him, and when Nicholas Fury, whom Pepper disliked, had put increasing pressure on the Captain to "get his head screwed on straight", it had been she who had vetted the S.H.I.E.L.D.-approved therapists until they found one that Steve had been able to get comfortable with. However, there was no magic bullet for acclimating oneself back into the world after a trauma, especially not the trauma of being frozen in a glacier and woken in the 21st century to find that the world was still full of violence and war, all of one's loved ones were dead, and the country and government that one had sacrificed his life for couldn't always be trusted to do the right thing. 

She had no doubt that Steve would be fine the minute his boots were on the ground and his shield was on his back. He was the perfect soldier—not because of a serum, but because of his sense of duty and his concern for anyone marching at his side. He would retain everything that was being said, and would fight to the death to protect Natasha should the mission go south. Everyone knew that. Pepper was fairly certain Tony and Bruce's comments and Natasha's gentle ribbing were not meant as doubtful of Steve's focus so much as offering him an inroad should he choose to explain himself. 

But Steve didn't talk about his personal life, or his feelings. Not with them, anyway. He voiced his opinions, and he made observations, but feelings? No. Not really. Whatever it was that had kept him awake, bruised his eyes and clouded his gaze, he wasn't going to tell. 

Which was why it surprised all of them when Bruce got it out of him, as easily as if they had been discussing the weather. 

"Steve's right," Bruce said abruptly. "A mason wouldn't need a wi-fi tester. He'd use this." The device he took from the satchel he'd brought in with him looked like a minesweeper, save for the screen that was set into the matte black box. "It's a GPR—ground penetrating radar. Even if the bunkers were left off the schematics, they can't hide from this—it'll show you where the entrances may have been in the old foundation of the castle. And the best part is, masons do use these to test stone density. It is perfectly logical for you to be carrying it around." 

"If I were really a mason," Steve said idly. 

"Here," Bruce said, turning his chair more towards the Captain. “I’ll show you how it works.” 

Natasha and Tony looked up, and Natasha leaned forward, lips parting as if to speak, but Bruce waved her off. "Make sure you've got that down, Natasha. Tony will go over it with you again. Steve can handle this." 

Tony looked like he wanted to argue a bit, but Natasha's eyes flickered, narrowed, and she turned back towards him with the screamingly yellow Geiger counter in her hand, nodding that he should begin his explanation again. If Tony didn't know when he was being dismissed, Natasha certainly did, although she kept an eye (and undoubtedly an ear) on the two men as she listened to Tony repeat his earlier instructions. 

Steve looked down at the GPR as Bruce flicked a switch and it hummed to life. But instead of an explanation on its function, Bruce simply asked, "Not sleeping?" 

Steve sighed through his nose. "I'm all right. Just a little...off balance. I'm all right." 

Bruce didn't believe this, but he began patiently pointing out the functions of the GPR. "Power button. Graph shows up here. You'll see where the depths change. It'll show you where to go." After a moment's thought, he reached into the satchel and took out another object. "And if it doesn't, maybe this will." 

Steve blinked in undisguised surprise as he took the offered item—a simple lensatic compass, metal and glass, burnished with age. For a moment, the Captain's eyes shimmered as he opened the lid, when he saw the expected, the dreaded nothing there, he let out a shaky breath. 

Bruce's eyes were gentle. "I know it's not the same as the one you lost." 

Steve smiled slightly. "I appreciate it all the same, Bruce. Thank you." 

They sat in companionable silence for a moment while Steve watched the needle swing, and then Bruce asked in the same calm, even voice, 

"What was her name?" 

That got a reaction, all right—Steve reared back in his chair as if he'd received an electric shock. His eyes were wide and wary. He stared at Bruce as if the other man had stared through him somehow and read his mind. Given the company they kept, this wasn't exactly out of the question, but telepathy had never been a skill that Bruce Banner had possessed. 

Empathy, however, was a different story. Bruce smiled almost sheepishly, reaching into his pocket—not for another device, but for an old, battered Lord Buxton, which he tossed gently on the table between himself and Steve. Steve's brows crimped in confusion, but Bruce nodded at him, indicating he should have a look at it. 

The wallet contained a few crumpled fives and ones. The driver's license showed a Bruce Banner whose eyes weren't yet haunted by the Mr. Hyde who now dogged his steps. In the little square, he was smiling ruefully the way everyone does knowing it's well nigh impossible to take an attractive picture for an identification card. And there was a photograph. 

Its edges were ripped, and there was a crease in one corner, but the woman inside it was safe from the ravages of wear and time. Dark hair, jewel-bright eyes under a roof of bangs, a girl-next-door smile. The kind of girl you'd bring home to your mother so she could fuss over her and stuff her full of apple pie, but with sharp intelligence plain in those sparkling eyes. 

"Betty," Bruce supplied softly, and when Steve looked up as if he had said a word in an alien language, Bruce pushed further with a teasing smile. "What? You think the only part of my tragic superhero origin story is the Other Guy? I can sing more than one note, you know." 

Steve almost laughed, his gaze flickering more warmly back down to the woman in the photograph. "She's something," he said politely, handing the wallet back almost reverently. 

"She sure is," Bruce agreed, taking it back as though he would put it back in his pocket. He watched Steve pick up the compass once more, eyes back on the swinging needle, before the final push: 

"What happened to yours?" 

The color drained slowly from Steve's face, and by this time everyone had abandoned what they were doing to watch and listen. They saw the glacier in his eyes—they frosted over, and his face became as blank as an ice floe. His voice was light, but toneless as he spoke. 

"Romanoff. You good?" 

Natasha blinked, but responded immediately. "Yeah. You?" 

Steve nodded. "Wheels up in thirty." He rose from his chair, offering his hand to Bruce to shake. The scientist did, rising himself, and then Steve inclined his head in a polite nod to the rest of the room's occupants before striding to the door, only the tenseness of his muscles betraying how eager he was to have a moment to himself. 

"Are we _sure_ he's going to be all right on this mission?" Tony asked blithely. "The needle has totally jumped the groove on his 45 this morning." He gave Pepper a comforting wink, and she smiled a little. 

"He's a pro," Natasha said, just as Bruce said, "Leave him be. He'll carry on." 

Everyone turned to look at Bruce, but his eyes were on the wallet, which had never made it back into his pocket. Rather, at the picture inside. 

"You just...do." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't, can't, can't get anything done without WickedKitteh. She found a GPR and a wi-fi tester in a closet, got Bruce to start talking, and if we're not careful one of us may end up in a wormhole. 
> 
> And the prologues still aren't done. The depth of these characters never ceases to amaze--and exhaust--me.


	3. Prologue: I Am The Living Legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How the compass ended up in the Smithsonian, and what Tony Stark plans to do about it.

**

** Prologue: I Am The Living Legacy **

**

_My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man;_  
_I am the living legacy to the leader of the band._

**(Dan Fogelberg, _Leader of the Band_ )**

**

After Captain America had gone, clearly needing a moment to himself, they had thirty minutes before the Black Widow had to join him to deploy. Natasha, who spent her down time trying to fix Steve up with available women in the agency, elected to spend it ignoring the Geiger counter, which she already knew how to use, in favor of something more interesting. 

"You knew," Natasha said to Bruce, and her tone was impressed. She did not make it a secret that she found Bruce Banner interesting, despite--or maybe because--he was so quiet; when he spoke, it was really to speak, and Natasha always listened, knowing there was usually something to be learned. "How did you know?"

The corners of Bruce's lips quirked up in a small smile. "You have to listen to the words he doesn't say. It's like the dog in the Sherlock Holmes story--the one that didn't bark."

"I'm not following you," Pepper said, and was grateful that no one batted an eye at her joining the conversation. Bruce in fact made a point to include her, speaking his response directly to her. 

"Remember Steve's list of things to learn about the time he'd been asleep?"

Natasha smirked. "Yeah. He's still got a ton of pop culture to catch up on, but we also have day jobs." 

Bruce always spoke a little more slowly, a little more gently when there were bigger personalities in the room, and Tony and Natasha definitely counted. While there was no personality bigger than the one Bruce referred to as "The Other Guy", he tended to speak deliberately and thoughtfully when "The Other Guy" wasn't around. "Well, remember how we had that movie night last month and someone crashed the party?"

Pepper's face darkened. "Ugh, yes. Fury." 

Natasha, who was oddly protective of Nick Fury for reasons that were clear to no one, arched a brow, but said nothing.

Tony snorted. "Yeah. Neither of the Wonder Twins had seen _Star Wars_. Clearly we had work to do."

Natasha's nostrils flared. "I have told you a thousand times not to call Steve and me that," she growled, but Tony was already swiveled in his chair, focused on a holoscreen and pulling up the specs for his latest tweak of his repulsors. Sitting still was a chore for him, and one ear on the conversation while he tinkered with something else was enough for him. 

Meanwhile, Pepper smiled; she remembered Tony's much more bombastic reaction to learning there was anyone in his presence who hadn't seen _Star Wars_ , and his hollered, urgent request for "popcorn, stat" had evolved into a night spent together in the Tower watching as much of the original trilogy as they could cram into one night of wakefulness. 

"Didn't you guys think it was odd that Steve was so in the mood for a movie? Especially one about combat? He usually avoids those," Bruce pointed out. "It's why he still hasn't seen _Indiana Jones._ "

"It hadn't been that long since you guys defused an alien threat to the city and, by extension, the world," Pepper argued. "Can't the guy have wanted to spend some time with his friends?"

"Pepper, I would never admit to this in public and if you ever tell anyone I've said this I will deny it up and down," Tony said, turning his attention briefly back to the conversation, "but I think the kid's all right. However, that is why I have to give him tons of crap whenever I interact with him, so that he might never know it." He grinned cheekily.

"You are a _dumb monster_ ," Pepper said firmly, as if she didn't have the heart to call him anything worse, trying to fight the smile on her face and failing entirely to keep the amused affection out of her eyes. 

"Stark's got a point," Natasha said. "I doubt Steve would consider an evening spent with Tony relaxing in any way. And it's even worse to watch a movie with Clint. He always talks through them."

"Oh, I do not," said the vent in the ceiling above their heads. Pepper looked up in alarm, while Bruce inclined his head up much more calmly. Natasha didn't even bother. 

"You may as well come in," she said crossly.

Clint accepted this invitation by dropping straight down through the vent to the floor, landing with his usual catlike quietness. "What'd I miss?"

"Nothing," Pepper said, shaking her head in resignation. "You weren't invited to this meeting."

"I know," Clint said cheerfully, hooking an arm around the still-seated Natasha's neck. "Came to say see you later to Nat. How come we're talking about _Star Wars_ night?"

Natasha, who had just been berating Clint a moment before, pressed an affectionate hand to the forearm Clint had locked around her, her eyes flickering with warmth.

"Something's up with Rogers," she explained. "Bruce thinks it might have something to do with the pompous asshole Fury brought with him when he crashed our plans."

"The guy from the museum?" Clint asked, then gave it some thought. "Steve did get a little jumpy when JARVIS told us they were coming up. And he seemed to be enjoying the movie before that happened."

"That's my point," Bruce cut in. "Steve needed a distraction. More than that, he needed a hiding place. That night, we were it."

"Hiding from who?" Natasha asked. "Fury? Fury didn't do anything to Rogers."

"Are you kidding?" Clint asked. "He tracked the man down and barged into our movie night to steal something that belonged to Steve, and looking at Steve, you would have thought it was his most prized possession."

"Fury didn't steal anything, especially not someone's prized possession. If I remember correctly, it was just a beat-up old compass, and Steve handed it over of his own free will," Natasha said, crossing her arms over her chest, but her voice was less confident now, as if making excuses for Fury was a habit rather than something she still believed wholeheartedly in doing. Again, Tony wondered why in hell Natasha, who could break a man's neck between her thighs, had such a soft spot for the guy who lied, double-talked, threw them under the bus regularly and basically used them all to further aims based on his own questionable ethics. 

"Free will?" Bruce said calmly. "Looked like extreme duress to me."

"I agree with Bruce," Clint said. "Maybe our next movie night should be _Rashomon_ , because that's not how I remember it."

Are you guys seriously still here?” Tony asked, as if he had forgotten their presence already and was now shocked that there were still people in his lab. "I give you state of the art technology and brilliant strokes of genius, and what do you want to talk about? Captain Underoos and his _feelings_." He said the last with purposeful overdramatic disdain, then turned back to his screen, shaking his head. "What was the big damn deal about that compass anyway?"

**

_The popcorn was good--Pepper had melted the butter in the microwave and thrown salt into the mixture before pouring it generously over the snack, and everyone's fingers were delightfully greasy with it as they shared. Tony, grinning, offered a buttery fingertip to Pepper, stroking her lower lip. She snorted and turned her head--they were in public, and unlike him, Pepper did not grandstand, despite the fact that she was sitting across his lap in the big, deep armchair while everyone else shared the sofa--but as soon as she saw they were not being watched, playfully nipped at his finger._

_Clint was his usual self, whacking at Natasha's shoulder with a complete disregard for both manners and his physical safety, which he constantly put in jeopardy by annoying her. "Watch this part, watch! This is right up your alley, Tasha. Espionage!"_

_"Clint, if you spoil **one more scene** \--" Natasha bellowed. On her other side, Bruce Banner was quietly eating popcorn out of Natasha's bowl and looking with amusement at Steve Rogers, whose face was open and delighted with the idea of a full-color space opera happening right before his eyes. _

_Natasha, upon realizing Bruce was eating her popcorn, having finished his own share, forgot Clint for the moment and seized his wrist._

_"Using Clint as a distraction is the oldest trick in the book, Banner," she purred. "You're treading dangerous ground here."_

_"I fear no evil," Bruce said placidly. "Maybe I just want to be able to say I stole something from the Widow and got away with it." The skin around his eye crinkled--not quite a wink, but close, and there was amusement in his gaze. "Or, maybe I'm just hungry. You'll never know."_

_"There's **more** popcorn, you guys," Pepper said in playful exasperation. "Cabinets and cabinets full. When we set up this entertainment center Tony bought a whole bunch of it. We have enough popcorn to see us through nuclear winter. It was crazy trying to figure out where to store it all."_

_"I wanted to put it in a silo and swim it in like Scrooge McDuck's money bin," Tony teased. This reference was lost on everyone but Clint, who laughed and pointed his beer bottle at Tony in a salute._

_There was a click and a buzz, and suddenly JARVIS spoke over the intercom system, the crystal-clear quality of which made it sound like he was simply another person in the room. " **Mr. Stark, Director Fury has been admitted by reception and is en route from the lobby. Do you wish me to shut the lights off and pretend we are not here?** "_

_There were times Tony regretted programming a sense of humor into his artificial intelligence. "Why does every receptionist I hire ignore the No-Fury-In-My-House rule?" Tony asked. "He should have let Fury cool his heels in the lobby and I would have come down. Why on earth would he be coming around at this hour anyway?"_

_"Maybe he's upset we didn't invite him to watch the movie," Bruce said serenely, and Natasha smiled._

_"Mission?" Clint asked, then answered his own question. "Nah, he would have called."_

_" **There is another man accompanying Director Fury** ," JARVIS reported. " **The credentials he presented to reception identify him as Mr. Ichabod Raglan, of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.** "_

_Steve blanched, his posture on the couch stiffening, the movie forgotten._

_Clint didn't notice Steve's discomfort. "Watch out, Cap! They've come to take you and put you on display!" he chortled._

_Natasha noticed Steve's alarmed expression and swatted at Clint. "Shut up, Hawkass. He's kidding, Steve."_

_Steve didn't look like he thought Clint was kidding. He got up from the couch and circled the little coffee table, heading towards the kitchen--and the elevator in the hallway that operated independently of the main elevators and was used only by those occupants who lived in the Tower full- or part-time. "I was afraid this might--look, I'm going to head up to my quarters."_

_"The movie isn't over," Natasha protested. "Steve, it's no big deal. Have a seat."_

_" **Captain Rogers, I should point out** \--" JARVIS began, but Tony interrupted smoothly._

_"Aww, don't be scared, Spangles," Tony soothed teasingly. "We'll scare away the big, bad bookworm from the museum. Go build yourself a pillow fort on the couch."_

_But Steve was already raising his hand to punch a button on the elevator; its doors opened promptly, as if it had just arrived on that floor, and Steve strode in--_

_\--only to back right out again, with Fury and a short-statured man in a three-piece suit and a tweed coat forcing him into retreat as they exited the elevator._

_" **I was going to say, Captain, that Director Fury had press-ganged the receptionist into allowing him access to the personal elevators, and I did not have time to override the codes** ," JARVIS pointed out, and the computerized voice sounded almost sorry that he hadn't been more helpful. _

_"Damn it," Tony burst out. "I'm firing that receptionist. He knows there's an approved list for those elevators." Narrowing his eyes at Fury, he said, "And you're not on it, Nick. Care to explain?"_

_"A, you should hire less cowardly receptionists," Fury began smoothly, "as being easily intimidated into allowing even me access to elevators leading to the private quarters of any Avenger, let alone a handful of them, could prove dangerous. B, I won't take up too much of your time. Just need to pick something up."_

_"C through Z, no you won't, because no you aren't," Tony said. "As you can see, we are incredibly busy right now."_

_Fury snorted upon glancing at the television screen, which was still playing **The Empire Strikes Back.**_

_The little man at Fury's side spoke up for the first time. "Mr. Stark, it's a pleasure to meet you. My name is--"_

_"Yeah, yeah, Ichabod Crane of the Smithsonian." Tony waved him away and turned his attention back to Fury. "I don't care if you brought Our Lord and Savior Nikola Tesla, you're not walking out of here with any of my stuff."_

_"It is **Raglan** , Mr. Stark," the little curator said huffily, "Ichabod Raglan, and we have no intention of leaving with anything that is not government--and now, by way of donation, Smithsonian property." _

_Clint, in a display of utterly lunatic confusion, leaped off the arm of the couch. "No way, man. I was just kidding, but I'm not kidding now--you are not taking the Captain to cage up at your museum! You'll have to get past me first."_

_Natasha put her head in her hands, muttering softly, "Clint...god damn it."_

_Fury gave Clint a withering look. Steve, who hadn't said a word during the exchange, suddenly went very still and quiet._

_"Captain Rogers," Fury said, "I believe you signed a contract turning over all property and instruments that were in combat with you to the Smithsonian, for display in their World War II exhibit, of which the Howling Commandos are a major fixture."_

_"I did," Steve said, as though he were on the stand facing trial._

_The diminutive Raglan cut in. "Captain, you met with a representative of my team this morning to deliver these items--a field journal, a sketch book, a uniform, an ammunition belt, a drop-leg holster, a Colt M1911 pistol with three bullets remaining in the magazine, a shoulder harness, one pair of boots, and a helmet. You were at the offices downstairs to hand these things off to a courier who would then deliver them to the museum, were you not?"_

_"I was," Steve said, again as if in his own defense. "What's the problem here?"_

_"Captain Rogers," Raglan continued, "there is an item missing from the list we had compiled of what you intended to donate."_

_Tony, along with everyone else in the room, witnessed something that had never happened before and might never happen again as far as they knew--Steve Rogers telling a fib._

_It wasn't even an out and out lie, just a fib, but Tony was proud of him for trying anyway. "That doesn't make sense. I'm pretty sure I gave you everything."_

_Unfortunately, Steve was a terrible liar, and it showed--his eyes were darting around like nervous radar, and his color was high._

_"Captain Rogers, the item we are referring to is an M1938 lensatic compass," Raglan said. "Standard issue, but still of historical value to us. It was not among the things you delivered to our representative this morning. The courier reported no trouble en route to the facilities we are temporarily using here, so we must conclude the item is still in your possession. I am sure it was just an oversight, but we must have the item now."_

_Steve took a breath, his impressive chest rising as he stared the little man down. His eyes were steely blue, his jaw set._

_"No."_

_Raglan's eyebrows popped up towards the top of his balding head. "Excuse me?"_

_"I said no," Steve said, louder this time. "You can't have that."_

_Fury sighed impatiently. "Captain Rogers, might I remind you that you signed a contract with these people?"_

_"I signed a contract to donate things to their exhibit, and I donated them," Steve said. "I'm done. I never intended to donate the compass, and I'm not going to. They can't have it."_

_Fury spoke aside to Raglan in a comforting tone. "He's got it on him, I assure you. We'll take care of this."_

_Tony glanced to Steve. "Come on. Even this big star-spangled doofus wouldn't be dumb enough to carry around something he was trying to hang on to."_

_But Steve's hand had gone instinctively to his pocket. " **Rogers** ," Natasha said in disbelief. "You didn't."_

_But of course he had; Steve now drew the object in question from the pocket of his jeans--a small metal compass with a flip-top lid. His fingers curled convulsively around it, but he made no move to hand it over._

_Raglan was, unbelievably, pulling paperwork out of the briefcase he carried, which he had propped on the counter in the kitchen and opened. "Captain Rogers, I am afraid the scope of the contract covers **all** items you carried in the field in 1945. That would include your compass."_

_"I said no, and I mean it," Steve insisted. "You can have the uniforms and the field journal. You can even have the sketch book if you want. But you can't have this. It's mine."_

_It occurred to Tony that it didn't make sense for Steve to surrender a sketch book--a far more personal item than a government-issued instrument--and demand to keep the compass. But the flinty look in the Captain's eyes was not to be argued with._

_"Technically, Captain Rogers, you were issued the instrument by the U.S. Army, so it is the property of the government," the little man said. "And the government has donated any and all such property, along with anything found in that aircraft, to the Smithsonian Museum. That includes the compass you are holding."_

_"The compass, Rogers," Fury said impatiently._

_Steve set his jaw. "No," he repeated, almost petulantly, like a child. "It's no good to them, anyway. It didn't survive the ice. It's broken--worthless to anyone but me."_

_"Are you certain it is broken, Captain Rogers?" Raglan asked. "Perhaps you would demonstrate."_

_"No." Steve pulled the compass out of reach as if Raglan had moved to take it from him. "No. You can't see it, and you can't have it, either."_

_Tony wondered briefly what about the compass Steve didn't want anyone to see, but his attention was diverted by the others rising to Steve's defense._

_"Let him keep it," Natasha said, darting forward to flank Steve and spearing the curator with steely eyes. Natasha was Steve's partner in the field, and right or wrong, she would back his play and sort it out later. "It's his. Come on, Nick. Let it go."_

_"It's just a compass," Clint agreed. "Not a big deal. They still make those, anyway--I saw 'em at the sporting goods store the other day when I was picking up some knockaround arrows. They're everywhere. You may as well let him keep it."_

_Tony jumped in to help. "Technically, Mr. Rugburn--"_

_"Raglan," the curator corrected, a trifle frostily._

_Tony was nonplussed. "Whatever. What I'm saying is, under your logic, Clint was right the first time--you may as well just put Rogers himself in the exhibit and feed him like he's an animal in the zoo. After all, the government gave him the serum, so according to what you're saying he's their property too."_

_Steve's eyes were wide and alarmed, as if he had at one point feared this exact scenario. Natasha looked equally nervous. "Not helpinnngggggg," Pepper sang softly in warning, but Tony knew what he was doing._

_"That's preposterous, Mr. Stark," the little curator sputtered._

_"I know! I'm glad we agree on how stupid that sounds." Tony put friendly hands on the man's shoulders and began to steer him towards the front door. "Let him have his compass. I'm sure you've got enough to put behind glass and sell tickets to see. One born every minute, right? Have a great night."_

_" **Mister** Stark." The curator planted his feet. "I am under strict orders not to return without the government's property. A lot of time and care have gone into creating this exhibit, and it is vital that we have all the pieces necessary to tell the Captain's story to future generations."_

_"He's still **living** his story!" Pepper burst out passionately, and they all stood a little straighter in echo of the truth in her statement._

_It was Nick Fury who defused their stand by saying, "Captain Rogers is still living his story, yes. But there are others whom the book has closed on." He narrowed that inscrutable eye on Steve. "Don't you think their story deserves to be told, too?"_

_Tony had no idea what that had to do with the compass. None of them seemed to--except Steve himself. His strong shoulders melted under the weight of what Fury had said, and Tony wondered if he were thinking of his Howling Commandos, the friends who were dead and gone._

_"They deserve that, Rogers," Fury said, and his voice was softer, cajoling--oily. Tony wanted to snarl to Steve not to trust that sibilant purr, the hissing echoes of it sounding too snaky for his comfort. There was a subtext here that no one in the room was aware of save Steve and Fury, and Steve was losing the battle--the struggle was evident in his eyes. "... **They**...deserve to have their story told. If you don't tell it...who will?"_

_And Steve, unbelievably, was starting to hand over the compass he was clutching, a look of utter defeat on his face. The curator was ready--he whipped out a small box from the pocket of his coat, opening it to receive the item as if he were afraid to touch it with his hands lest the natural oil from his fingertips damage it, despite the fact that Steve held it right now in one ungloved hand._

_Then Steve pulled it back._

_"Wait," he said, before Fury could speak again or Raglan voice a complaint. More quietly, he mumbled something no one in the room could quite catch--it sounded like, "Not yet. Let me look at it one last time--let me look at it just a little longer."_

_"Captain Rogers, it will be preserved in the museum and cared for by our top antiques specialists, and on display for viewing at any time," the archivist promised, having won his war, but Steve wasn't listening anymore; he had the compass open in his hand, looking at the damaged face, the still, broken needle, as if it was showing him the past._

_"One more time," Captain America murmured to no one, almost a whisper, his faraway eyes fixed heartbrokenly on true north, holding the compass away from everyone else's gaze, like it held a secret. "Just let me see it one last time."_

_The TV, forgotten, continued playing the film in the room beyond, the dialogue distantly audible._

_" **I love you** ," Princess Leia told Han Solo, who simply responded, " **I know**."_

**

Clint let go of Natasha, his face stilling into thoughtfulness. "Now that I think about it, Steve _was_ pretty upset about that."

"He was _really_ upset," Pepper said. "He barely spoke for the whole rest of the movie."

"OK, maybe Banner has a point and the compass was a big deal," Natasha said. "We still don't know why."

Tony had had enough. With a grumble of frustration, he turned in his chair. "Do I have to do _everything_ around here? Have you guys ever heard of a thing called the Internet? It's really helpful, it's full of cute cat memes, and the only reason I didn't invent it is because I was too young. Gather round the campfire, kids."

Pulling up another holoscreen, a bigger one this time, Tony skillfully manipulated the information he began to sift through until he found what he was looking for--a WWII newsreel about Captain America and the Howling Commandos, digitally remastered and embedded on a web site dedicated to the history of America's involvement in the war. 

As the Avengers watched, Steve Rogers, looking much like he did nowadays aside from a more modern haircut and a more haunted, jaded look in his eyes, leaned over a map with his Commandos and opened the compass they had all watched him surrender to Ichabod Raglan. 

Affixed to the inside of the lid was a photograph of a woman. Her hair framed her face in a soft wave, the sort favored by women of the time, dark curls barely brushing her shoulders. Dark eyes, lipsticked mouth, the color impossible to guess at from the black-and-white newsreel. The full lips had a slight quirk to them, the barest hint of a smile--not quite, but almost. 

"A- _ha_ ," Clint said, just as Natasha murmured, "You were right, Bruce." Turning back to the screen, she added, "Who's the babe?"

It was Tony who sat back in his chair, an uncharacteristically stunned look on his face. He blinked at the screen, then abruptly reached out and shut it off.

"Hey," Clint said. "It wasn't over."

"It's over," Tony said, and cleared his throat. "Come on, Nat, get gone. You've got three minutes. Thanks for your help, Bruce."

Bruce shrugged in response to Natasha's questioning look; they all rose from their seats and headed for the door.

"It's probably best you don't mention any of this to Steve," Bruce told Natasha as he walked alongside her down the corridor that led away from the lab, Clint cheerfully bringing up the rear. 

"And risk losing my hair to radiation poisoning?" Natasha quipped. "No worries. Rogers has enough on his mind." Glancing knowingly back down the corridor, she said, "Tony knows who she is."

"A conversation for another time," Bruce said. "Luck, Natasha. Take care of Steve, and yourself."

"I'm pretty good at the first one," Natasha said, turning to lope off towards the elevator that would take her to the hangar, "and best at the second one. Thanks for the ugly wi-fi tester, Banner." She gave Clint another hug. "Get lost, birdbrain. See you when I get back."

Clint smacked a noisy, brotherly kiss against her cheek. "See you then. Try not to get killed."

They shared a smile.

**

Once they'd gone, Tony tried studiously to return to his work--not that the repulsors really needed replacing, but he was a perfectionist and was always striving for more efficient output with less energy required to run them--but found himself unable to.

Of course, he knew who she was. Her picture was down in the lobby, on the Wall of Valor--not the picture that Steve had placed lovingly inside the lid of his compass, but a similar one. There were very few pictures of her in existence, so he didn't blame Natasha or Clint for walking past the Wall whenever they came and went, didn't blame Bruce for not knowing who she was. 

But Tony knew. Of course, he knew. 

Now, thinking back on the night Captain America had surrendered his compass to the museum curator, letting go of it forever, Tony realized he had misheard Steve--they all had. His memory now provided the missing piece, the word that had fallen so softly from Steve's lips that everyone had willfully assumed he had said something else entirely. 

Not "let me look at it just a little longer". Not "let me see it one last time". Not " _it_ " but " _her_ ".

Her.

Let me look at _her_.

_Let me look at her just a little longer. Just let me see her one last time._

Just a little longer, he'd begged. One last time.

_Let me look at her._

_Let me see her one last time._

"Tony," Pepper said, jarring him out of his thoughts in that loving but warning tone. "Whatever you're thinking, don't."

"Relax, Pep," Tony soothed. "What makes you think I'm thinking anything at all?"

Pepper circled the table and draped her arms around his neck, something he secretly adored her doing, and looked into his eyes. "I know that despite appearances, you care about Steve. But give him some space. He's got to work through this on his own. He doesn't need Natasha trying to fix him up with someone in the typing pool, and he doesn't need you dredging up painful memories, no matter how good your intentions are."

Feeling a flush rise to his cheeks at how well she could read his mind, Tony found himself doing something he didn't normally do, except with her--speaking plainly, no bravado, no wit. "I wish I could help him. Even a little. Even if I just got that compass back for him. They really _shouldn't_ have taken it. It wouldn't have been a big deal. Maybe the museum--"

Pepper silenced him with a soft, slow kiss, and he felt a surge of love for her, for how well she complemented him, how she tempered his rashness with common sense, how she reminded him to slow down and think about things. She rested her forehead against his affectionately as their lips parted, reiterating, "Tony. Let it be."

Tony sighed. "I just..."

"I know." Pepper kissed him gently again. "I've got to go down to my office and check my email, and you have a couple of meetings--which means, I have a couple of meetings. I can handle them. Stay here and play with your toys. Try not to dwell on it."

Tony smiled. "You complete me."

She laughed softly and touched the protrusion beneath his shirt, gently, the reactor that powered his well-meaning but intensely conflicted heart. "Somehow."

**

Let it be, she had said. But as morning wore into afternoon, Tony found he hadn't been able to.

Tony had grown up with stories of the woman who would have been his "Aunt" Peggy. Aunt Peggy had been scintillatingly intelligent. Aunt Peggy had been tough as nails. Aunt Peggy had been the best agent in the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Even Captain America himself had looked to Aunt Peggy for guidance and support. Aunt Peggy had been very, very beautiful, and had turned heads everywhere she had gone--yes, even Captain America's, especially his. There had been plenty of times over the course of Howard Stark's life, through his battles and successes, that Tony had heard him murmur, almost to himself, "If only Peggy could see this," or, on very, _very_ rare occasions when he had accomplished something particularly groundbreaking, "Look, Peg. We did it."

Only once had Tony worked up the courage to ask how close Aunt Peggy might have come to being "Mother"--and even then, he had not had the nerve to ask his father. It had been Jarvis who had been asked and who had answered: not close at all; it was not at all like that, the butler had assured Tony. Aunt Peggy, Jarvis had said, with the same fondness in his voice that colored Howard's whenever they spoke of that esteemed lady, was simply a very good friend, the best kind, and it was only natural that Howard should wish that she were here to see the agency she had envisioned flourish with its hand in the guiding hand of Stark Industries. It was a shame, Jarvis had concluded, that she were not here to see him, Tony, grow up.

"Would Aunt Peggy have liked me?" young Tony had once asked, with a shyness that had not yet been beaten out of him by the pressure to live up to his father's legacy, by his mother's death, by his own insecurities, by a world that could be cruel and unfair to even the most favored son of Stark. 

Jarvis had smiled easily, assuring Tony that yes, Aunt Peggy would have adored him, exactly as she had been enduringly fond of his father, despite her blustering and chastising of him. Aunt Peggy and Tony, Jarvis promised, would have been fast friends, just as she and Jarvis himself had been, and the world was a poorer place without Peggy Carter. 

Tony had believed--still believed--this, but it had been like looking at old photographs in an album, like listening to a fairy tale; he had not known the woman who seemed to have meant so much to the people he cared about. Now these memories, the old stories and recollections, spun lazily around in his head, a cheerful carousel powered by the calliope music of old, unshakable love. 

"He _must_ have had a photo of her," Tony deduced quietly aloud. "He _must_ have had _one_."

It was very true that he could have quite easily gone on to the internet and located a photo of Margaret Carter. However, they would all have been press photos, news items--nothing personal, nothing warm. That wasn't what he wanted--or what Steve needed; Tony remembered the heartbroken look in the Captain's sleepy eyes when he had opened the compass Bruce had handed him and not seen his Agent Carter's picture smiling back at him from inside.

Steve had been angry about the compass being taken because he wanted _his_ photo. He wanted _his_ familiar photo of his beloved Peggy, wanted the image that had been the last thing he was looking at when he had thought his life was ending. 

Tony couldn't get him that photo back, and he knew it; Pepper was right that they would have to let the things in the Smithsonian go. But surely, _surely_ Howard Stark had possessed at least one photo of Peggy Carter, one taken in a familiar setting when her walls were down, when she might even have been smiling. If he could give his friend back his best girl's smile...

Pepper had said to let it be...but Tony just couldn't. He was a fixer; it was what he did and what his whole life revolved around. He knew he couldn't fix Steve's life, but if he had a chance, for even a moment, to ease the burden, he couldn't pass that up. 

Tony got up from his workbench and headed towards the corner of the lab where he stored the boxes of his father's old things--journals, diagrams, even some spare machinery parts. He would just look. He'd just go through the things quickly, the same way he did every so often to see if a new idea might jump out at him. He'd just look, just for a few minutes. Pepper was overreacting. It wasn't going to do any harm just to _look_ , right? 

After all, he might not even find anything.

**

_New York City, 1947_

**

"Say cheese, Peg," Howard said cheekily, holding up the camera.

Peggy responded by calmly picking up a file folder and holding it in front of her face. 

"Awwww, come onnnnnn, Peg!" Howard whined playfully. "You used to be fun."

Peggy let the folder drop slowly, a faraway look on her face. "I used to be a lot of things, Howard."

Sighing and placing the camera on the desk she was perched on, Howard braced his hands on the wood and leaned towards her. "You still are all of those things, Peggy. And you'll be so much more."

She looked away. 

Howard put his hand on her shoulder. "Hey. Come on."

Peggy sighed. "Sometimes I wonder if I am just tilting at windmills."

Daring to brush his fingers beneath her jaw and tilt her chin up, a casual touch he was normally far too smart to attempt with her, Howard looked her in the eye. "Listen to me. You're the reason we're working so hard to set this agency in motion. You're the one who everyone looks to for guidance. You're the north star his compass pointed to. And you're the one that's giving us all the strength to go on to make a better future. I never have to wonder how to do the right thing anymore--all I have to do is ask myself what you would do." He smiled, not the seductive smile he used to charm women into his bed or the confident smirk he gave to the press, but a real smile, for a real friend. 

"You're my hero, Peg."

Peggy's brown eyes were suspiciously bright, and the smile she gave him in return was watery, but genuine. She said nothing.

Knowing the moment had to be broken no matter how much he wanted it to last, Howard let her go and picked up his camera again, stepping back from the desk. "Now come on. I want to be able to show the world the humble beginnings of the reborn agency that saves it all the damn time. Our Founder. Agent Carter, already a legend."

Peggy shook her head ruefully, but rearranged her cranberry-colored skirt and straightened her posture. She crossed one shapely leg over the other, bracing her hands against the edge of the desk, and gave him that subtle, lovely smile, the one that told everyone she was both an unstoppable force and an immovable object. 

Howard pushed the shutter. 

**

_New York City, 2016_

**

The photo was in one of Howard's project journals. It was one Tony himself had never had any interest in--a bizarre idea for a hovercar that had probably seemed loony even in 1944. Howard Stark had obviously abandoned the project, maybe because it hadn't worked--although Tony doubted that; he figured Howard had simply seen the market turning elsewhere and focused on ideas that he could sell. 

In the photo, which had not just been tucked into the journal but glued onto a back page towards the end of the book, Peggy Carter was seated on the edge of a desk, in a woolen skirt of some deep color and a white blouse with a bow at her throat. Her dark, glossy hair was swept artfully off her brow in a soft wave, curls laying on her shoulders, and her lipsticked mouth was giving the camera an almost secretive smile.

"You _were_ very, very beautiful," Tony murmured to the photo in sudden, unabashed enchantment. It was a surprise every time he saw that enigmatic little smile, and he could see very clearly how the woman in the picture had so easily and completely captured the heart of the Captain and charmed Tony's own father into a loyalty that Howard Stark had shown very few other people. 

It was only when Tony lifted the photo from the book, carefully prying it off the page by sliding an X-Acto knife carefully under its crumbling edges and freeing it from the old, cracking glue, that he saw what Howard Stark had scrawled beneath the image he had pasted into his book of notes and theories:

_DO IT FOR HER_

It was so close to what Steve had said when he had relinquished the compass, what Fury had hinted at when he had coerced Steve into giving it up, that it made Tony's chest feel tight. 

_Let me look at her just a little longer. Let me see her one last time. Do it for her._

"Do what?" Tony asked the book in rising excitement at this mystery, his heart aching with love at the sight of his father's handwriting, dashed off hurriedly with emotion. "Do what for her, Dad? What did she need?"

"Tony?"

It was Pepper, and Tony smiled with affection at his most valued employee, who had broken through the walls around his heart to become the love of his life. Loyal, loving Pepper had not believed for a second that he was going to let the past stay in the past, and she had come back here, if not to stop him, to simply be there if he had needed her. "Look what I found," Tony said lightly, showing her the photo in the book. "I knew he must have had one. Wasn't she pretty, Pep?"

Pepper glanced sadly at the photo, pressing her lips together. "Tony..."

"I know, I know, leave it alone," Tony said hurriedly. "I am, Pep. I am. You want to get out of here?"

Pepper's concern hadn't lessened, but was tempered with love. "I think you need to, yes. I don't know about you, but I'm starving--" She looked at her silver watch, a moderately gorgeous thing he had "given" her for the tenth anniversary of her working for him, which meant she had picked it out herself and charged it to his account. "--and I think it's fair to say we could have an early dinner. How about Connelly's?"

Tony sighed in anticipation and relief. He was hungry, and he was still reeling from all the conflicting emotions the journal and photo had stirred up in him. A cozy dinner out with Pepper would be comforting. "Sounds great. Bypass burger for me, chicken sandwich for you? Let me just...let me..."

Pepper watched him as he cast about for something to write with. He turned to a clean page in his father's old notebook and began to write. He started by addressing the note to "Spangles", and didn't miss Pepper's subtle smile of approval when he ripped the page out of the book, crumpled it up and tossed it away, turning to the next page and starting over.

_Hey Cap,_

_Know you're missing your_

No. Too jovial, too familiar. Pepper dodged another wadded-up paper ball, looking far more relaxed now, as Tony tried once more.

_Steve_

_Found this in my dad's things_  
_Thought you might like to have it_

_Tony_

He tore the page out of the book, a little sloppily to emphasize the casual tone he wanted to convey, and handed the note to Pepper, who took it and glanced over it, nodding.

"That's lovely, Tony. That's just right."

He smiled a little, almost boyishly, at the praise, and then allowed her to lead him out of the lab, taking a brief side trip to the residential part of the Tower to slide the photo, with the note paper-clipped to it, under the door to Steve's quarters. Tony wasn't sure when Steve would be staying there again instead of his own place, especially since he and Natasha were deployed for the next few weeks, but when he did he would find it, and maybe it would make him smile, give him a better night's sleep for once. 

**

For the next few days, Tony had kept the project journal on his workbench. He told himself it was just because he was too lazy to go back and put it with the rest of his father's things, but it was really because he was still incredibly intrigued by the note written under the photo; he couldn't get it out of his mind.

It wasn't for lack of trying. He tweaked the repulsors. He supercharged the engine of one of his cars, just for the hell of it. He tinkered with a higher ratio of platinum to iron in his armor plates, ultimately rejecting the idea because it would add too much weight to the suit per cubic foot. But he kept finding his mind straying to the journal on the edge of the workbench.

Finally, he took a break from screwing around with a sleeker deployment arm for the small missiles he had on his wrist gauntlets to flip through the book, uncaring about the grease he was smearing on its pages. 

Tony and his father had never been particularly close. Most of the time, Tony didn't care about that, or at least tried to act like he didn't. But going over Howard Stark's project notes was a level playing field for Tony--a place that he felt he could not only compete, but reach out somehow to the legacy of his father. He tried not to imagine what they might have accomplished together, if only they'd had the time.

Which was why what was in the journal appeared, at first glance, to be lunacy.

"What even is this?" Tony asked the empty lab aloud, turning the pages carefully--the book was old, and their edges were crumbling. "Looks like a kid's science fair project."

Actually, he wasn't sure what it looked like. It appeared to have something to do with the electromagnetic field--bending it, or at least manipulating it to generate some sort of energy output.

 _I could make this_ , Tony thought suddenly. _It's just a small-scale housing for a few superconductors, and a curved surface to make sure the EM waves go where they're supposed to, and hooking it up to a power source. I could do it in two weeks. Maybe even one._

But why bother? Whatever this thing was, it didn't look familiar to Tony, so Howard had clearly never completed the project. He'd abandoned it for some reason, and if he hadn't seen a point in continuing, what point was there to Tony trying to replicate it now?

 _I've got tools he didn't have_ , Tony thought as if making a case for himself. _Materials he didn't have. And as for power--well, I've got the Tower of Power right here in the building. On the scale he was experimenting with, I could use a reactor as small as the one in my chest, but if I went bigger...hooked it up to the **Tower's** reactor by diverting the power from the main..._

Still, that didn't answer the question: why?

"Well," Tony said aloud to no one with idle curiosity, "why not?"

**

So over the next couple of weeks, whenever Tony felt like his eyes were crossing because he was staring too hard at his current project, he took a break to read the project journal and try to replicate the device that Howard had seemed to think was so important, and then had suddenly abandoned.

It was pretty easy to replicate a shatterproof housing for the device itself, but upon further inspection, Tony had elected not to try and rebuild the superconductors that Howard had been using to try and manipulate the electromagnetic field. He had a better idea--the repulsors that he used to defy gravity in his suit were the sleeker, smarter descendants of those superconductors, and they would be stronger and more efficient. As for powering the whole thing up, he was sticking with his original idea of diverting power from the large-scale arc reactor that powered the Tower. No fuss, no muss, just a hell of a mess if something went wrong and he knocked out the power to twelve city blocks or so. But when had Tony Stark ever cared about ticking people off?

It was towards the end when he was attempting to make the final hookups that it became apparent to Tony finally what his father had been trying to do. 

Howard hadn't had the advances Tony had--the superconductors hadn't been strong enough, and whatever power source Howard had been using wasn't able to generate enough juice to keep them running, but as Tony aligned his own ingredients for the spell of science Howard had wanted to cast, he realized that, should all go to plan, the result would be a tear in space and time--the sort of thing Einstein had referred to as a "wormhole" and was now used as a tired, pawsore B-plot on episodes of science fiction television shows all trying to be the next _Star Trek_.

"This can't be serious!" Tony told the book incredulously. "He was trying to _time travel_? What in the hell was he thinking?"

The robotic arm with the claw grip that Tony had affectionately nicknamed "Dum-E"--who had pride of place in the lab after saving Tony's life the night he had been attacked by Obadiah Stane--whirred and tilted, emitting a questioning chirp, like Tony's own personal R2-D2. 

"You're right," Tony said with the light of discovery in his eyes. "What am I asking you for?" Stepping forward to the control panel he had constructed, the buttons sleeker and shinier than the toggle switches Howard had used and Tony had never even seen, he reached for the lever that would divert power from the reactor to the machine. "Let's go ask _him_."

**

_New York City, 1947_

**

 _Maybe tomorrow you'll let me talk you into that drink_ , Daniel had said.

Peggy Carter sighed. Daniel Sousa was a good person, a kind person, a hell of an agent, and easy on the eyes, to boot. He had made no secret of the fact that he felt the same way about her, but he was more inclined to see if it led anywhere further than shared smiles and a few glances in the office.

Still...something made her hesitate.

All right, not _something_. She knew exactly what it was.

 _You must stop this_ , she told herself. _You cannot change the past. You must look toward the future._

She _was_ thinking of the future, she thought in argument against herself. She was thinking of it every day by pouring her heart and soul into this agency. And now was a crucial time, certainly not a time to be worried about possibly falling--

The elevator shuddered, a whining, grinding sound coming from the cables it rode on. Peggy looked up in brief alarm--and then the car dropped. 

_Oh my God_ , Peggy thought as the elevator fell, her hair fluttering with the increased speed. _Oh my God_. They would find her--Daniel would find her, oh, poor Daniel, poor Howard, they would find her--in the morning, mangled at the bottom of the elevator shaft in the remains of the shattered car. 

What would happen then? Would Daniel carry on with the agency in her absence? Would Howard still be willing to help if she were not there? And what of her? Was there anything after this?

Would she see _him_ again?

And then, as abruptly as it had begun to plummet, the elevator jerked to a halt, and Peggy was tossed to the floor. Her head struck the wall of the elevator car, but not hard enough to do anything but irritate her; her hat was knocked from her head. Muttering as she sorted herself out, she picked it up, brushed it off and replaced it atop her hair, smoothing a disheveled curl back into place.

 _Close one_ , she thought, like a detective in a pulp novel, and that made her smile...which made it easier to forget the pang of disappointment at the thought that the posthumous reunion she wondered about was put off for another night. For many nights to come. 

She sighed, feeling suddenly tired. She would get a good night's rest, she decided, and then come back in the next morning ready to work. 

Ready to carry on.

The elevator doors opened and she strode out, heels clicking on the tiled floor.

**

_New York City, 2016_

**

Pepper Potts heard the alarm klaxon shriek like an air-raid siren and dropped her water bottle, having been on her way to check on Tony after her workout. She had thought she was too exhausted to do anything but sink into a Jacuzzi, order dinner and call it an early night, and she'd been on her way to ask him if he wanted to join her for any or all of those activities when the firebell screamed and she realized she had energy to spare--she broke into a sprint and made her way to the lab. The lights flickered and then dimmed all around her in the hallway, as if the electrical systems were browning out. She knew that was impossible thanks to the reactor, so this only made her more concern.

The situation, thankfully, was well in hand. Well, it was sort of a hand. Dum-E had a fire extinguisher in its stubby metal claw, and it was spraying Tony and the smoking remains of whatever he had been tinkering with. If Pepper hadn't known it was impossible, she'd have said the mechanical arm looked cheerful, as if it were happy to help.

" _JARVIS_!" Tony coughed from somewhere within the smoky, foaming mess. " _JARVIS, reroute reactor power back to the mains_!"

" _ **Very good, sir**_ ," JARVIS responded. " _ **All power has been routed back to its original course. Shall I ring the fire department?**_ "

"Tony!" Pepper screamed, running from the doorway to fall to her knees at his side. "What happened? What happened?"

"Nothing," Tony wheezed. "Nothing, Pep. You were right. I should have just let this one go." Glaring up at Dum-E, who was now spraying foam at them both, he added, "Would you _stop_ that?!"

The arm whirred and chirped, as if questioning him. 

"Did I just hear you say that I was right?" Pepper asked incredulously. "Hold on, let me get my cell phone out. Can you repeat that on video?" She laughed, until she got a better look at his shocked face and wide eyes. The smile fell right from her face and she darted forward. "Tony. Oh, Tony, what's wrong?"

Tony waved the foam away, his face and hands smeared with soot, his t-shirt in shreds. The arc reactor in his chest glowed steadily. "I'm fine, I'm fine. It just--it just didn't work, damn it, that's all."

"What didn't work?" 

"A damn high school science project, that's what. The next time someone tells me what a genius my father was, remind me to sock them in the mouth," Tony groused instead of answering. "I can't believe I even tried this."

Pepper put an arm around his shoulders. "All right. Come on. It's okay. Whatever it is, it's okay." She was relieved he seemed to be more angry than hurt. "I was coming down to ask you if you wanted to jump in the Jacuzzi. Now I think you definitely need to clean up!"

Tony smirked, arching a singed brow at her. "Come on, we could get a little dirtier, first." Winking, he said, "No need for the fire department, JARVIS, you've got Dum-E to the rescue here."

The arm gave a happy chirp.

"Just do me a favor and seal this room off for a while, would you? Shut everything down." Grinning at Pepper, he added, "Pep's right. I could use a bath."

" _ **Very good, sir**_ ," JARVIS repeated.

As Tony and Pepper exited the room, Tony looped an arm around Pepper's waist and pulled her closer. "You said it, JARVIS."

**

_New York City, 1947_

**

In the darkened lobby of the building Howard Stark owned and which would house the offices of the fledgling agency borne of the SSR--later to be named SHIELD--the elevator slowly came to a stop, its doors opening as the indicator lights glowed and the bell rang to signal its arrival.

There was no one inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how I managed to do two chapters in as many days. Sadly, we shouldn't get used to this.
> 
> WICKEDKITTEH KNOWS ALL AND SEES ALL
> 
> I almost, almost, ALMOST feel like the story might actually, you know, START next chapter. 
> 
> Ooh!


	4. We Know Her Value

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel Sousa has to let go.
> 
> Steve Rogers can't let go.
> 
> Maria Hill is having a bad day.
> 
> And Jemma Simmons is about to get the surprise of her life.

** Chapter One: We Know Her Value **

_And the history books forgot about us, and the Bible didn't mention us_  
_And the Bible didn't mention us, not even once_  
_And we couldn't bring the columns down,_  
_No, we couldn't destroy a single one_  
_And the history books forgot about us, and the Bible didn't mention us,_  
_Not even once._

**(Regina Spektor, _Samson_ )**

_What does it mean to live on in the mind of another? Nothing, I think. You aren't really there, are you?_

**(Anne Rice, _The Vampire Lestat_ )**

**

_New York City, 1948_

**

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

Daniel Sousa looked up from the velvet box he was holding and the object gleaming inside. He gave the speaker--Shaughnessy, a holdover from the SSR, which seemed like a lifetime ago, and who had thankfully stepped up to become a solid, dependable addition to the new agency--a long, searching look.

"No, of course I don't want to do this," he said quietly. "I don't want to cut this ribbon without her. It isn't right or fair to do that. And I don't want to move on. I don't want to find someone else to step into her shoes, because no one can. I don't want to be told to want something different, or that I'll feel better about it someday. I want to keep looking, and I want to keep hoping."

He sighed, looking out into the room at the small crowd that had assembled. "But it's been a year. And if I _don't_ do this--if _we_ don't--then all her work will have been for nothing. I won't let that happen. It's _her_ story, even if we're the ones who are telling it. This is her legacy. It's up to us."

Shaughnessy looked uncomfortable during this speech, shifting his feet and pulling at his tie. "Jeez, Sousa, I meant did you want someone else to give the speech, cause we got a script we can run from if you're not feeling up to it." He gave Sousa a pointed look. "Everyone knows how you felt about...well, you know."

Sousa's brows met over his suddenly furious eyes. "That. That's why I'm doing this. Say it. Say her name." He snapped the velvet box shut and got his crutch under his arm. "Damn it, we are going to say her name. As long as this agency exists, people will say her name." 

His legs felt heavy as he ascended the small dais that had been constructed and made his slow way to the podium in its center. As he looked out onto the small crowd, the questioning, hopeful faces, his mouth went dry. He pulled a file folder with a set of papers in it from the narrow shelf beneath the podium's surface, set it on the stand and opened it. However, it did not contain a written speech--he didn't need one.

Inside the folder, a photo of Peggy Carter, taken during the war, smiled up at him. 

Sousa felt a sudden, unexpected calm steal over him as he looked at the photo, trying to imagine Peggy striding onto the parade ground at Camp Lehigh, which was likely where the photo had been taken, that steely look in her eyes, that determination written all over her. _If you lose no one but me when all this is over, then God himself fights on our side_ , Peggy would have said about her own disappearance. _We carry on_ , she would have said, _because we must_. Peggy had known all about carrying on in the face of loss--she had carried her Captain's shield in her heart, till the last, and had still poured her entire being into the agency he was about to christen from the podium she should have been standing at.

Sousa closed his eyes, took a slow, even breath, then opened them again.

"So," he said conversationally, "we're finally here."

Relieved, comfortable laughter from the crowd, seated before him in chairs that had been dragged in from the offices to mingle with the ones that had already been in the conference room they were using for this event. 

"And we're here," Sousa continued, "because of Margaret Carter."

Murmurs from a few people, mostly the holdovers from the SSR, some of whom had known Peggy personally, and others who had simply already known the legend that had been beginning around her. And some who had known the depth of Sousa's admiration for Peggy. 

"There isn't enough said about Agent Carter," Sousa declared, "and that's something I want to change. Because there is just _so much_ to say. The soldiers that served with her in the European Theater during the war, to a man, would have laid down their lives for her. She was smart, she was brave, she was strong, and she never, never faltered in her determination to do what was right and just. Those are the sort of values this agency is built on. Those are the sort of values our agents--all of you--have been chosen for."

The crowd was quiet, impressed by this depth of feeling and the eloquence with which it was expressed.

"That's a hell of a word, isn't it?" Sousa said abruptly, as if they were having a simple conversation. "Value."

He glanced down at the picture on the podium and smiled slightly.

"But that was the thing about Peggy. She made us all reconsider what that word means, and especially what it meant when it came to her. She saved more people than I can count, saved the SSR itself, and she never got credit for any of it. When I once asked her how she could even stand to watch other people get medals pinned on them while she was treated like a secretary even after proving what a woman could do--what _she_ could do--in the field, all she said was..."

Sousa glanced at the picture again.

"'I know my value'," he quoted. It was getting harder to speak, and he cleared his throat. "That was Peggy. People are always loudest when they're afraid they won't be heard, but Peggy never doubted her worth. She wasn't the loudest, or the biggest. Just the best."

The crowd was silent, rapt. Listening.

"So do _your_ best," Sousa concluded. "Know your value. Know your worth. Carry this agency forward with the same courage and determination Peggy Carter had. We're in a dangerous business, but it's a dangerous world."

Shaughnessy, for his part, was already motioning to the new agents that they should rise, and before Sousa made his way down to hand out the velvet boxes arranged neatly on a table at the foot of the dais, he gave them his parting message.

"So let's offer our protection. Welcome to SHIELD, agents."

Making his slow and careful way down the small steps at the side of the dais, Sousa joined Shaughnessy at the table where the boxes were laid out, but began the ceremony with the one he had carried in his pocket. Now he flipped it open to look at its contents once more--a silver pin, carved into the symbol that had begun life on the piece of paper Peggy had been idly sketching on a year ago. The outspread wings, the eagle--the symbol of SHIELD.

Glancing over the line of new agents, Sousa smiled slightly. Instead of beginning at the front of the line, he made his way to the middle, to a specific trainee he had noticed early on. All the trainees they had vetted had been skilled, but this one possessed a quality that Peggy had been very respectful of, and Sousa had always planned to present this agent with their "badge" first when this day finally came. He imagined Peggy would have done something similar, and he thought she might have liked his plan; in a way, he was doing it for her.

Opening the box, he told the recruit, "Agent Carter had planned to give something like this to the recruits when we finally officially opened our doors. And I think she would have been honored to present the very first one to you, O'Malley."

"Thank you, sir," the recruit said, taking the box with an almost reverent awe. 

"Welcome to SHIELD," Sousa said as the box changed hands between them. "Now, tell us. What's your name?"

And the young woman--for O'Malley was indeed a woman, and the first to stand with Peggy's SHIELD--straightened her spine even further, her eyes alight with determination as she said,

"Agent."

**

_The Quinjet, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, 2016_

**

Steve Rogers opened the compass Bruce Banner had given him before he and Natasha had deployed. Its lid stared blankly back at him.

Mentally, he berated himself for letting his control slip in front of them, especially Tony, but he had been almost unable to help it. The nightmares were getting worse, and he knew why.

The truth was, it had all been for nothing.

He closed his eyes, fighting the burning of his eyes and the tightness of his chest that he felt every time he let himself be honest. 

_All for nothing. All for nothing._

The truth was, Johann Schmidt had been correct. Captain America had cut off only one head of the HYDRA--and there were more ugly heads rising even these days. He had not defused the Tesseract, either. Steve never used vulgar language, but a familiar vulgarity had almost escaped his lips when he had learned that SHIELD had kept the thing to study, and it was the fact that they had done so that had allowed Loki to compromise and hurt Clint Barton and bring an alien invasion down on their heads. He hadn't even been able to save Bucky. 

And if nothing he had done meant anything in the end--if the world was still dark and mad and he had made no difference at all, no difference--then what had been the point of giving up a life with his best girl?

As the months turned into years he had tried not to allow himself to dwell on what it might have been like--an apartment in Brooklyn after the war, maybe even a house. A dog they'd walk in the evenings after work. Peggy in civilian dresses, fitted skirts and silky blouses...a wedding dress. He had told himself that they had both sacrificed these things for the greater good--he to stop the Skull, and she to found the agency that would carry on the protection they had sworn to during the war. 

When he had finally been released from the SHIELD medical facility in New York after the ice, one of his first requests had been to be taken to her grave. He hadn't cared whether it was stateside or overseas--he wanted to pay his respects, lay down his poppies and shed a tear for the life that could have been. It had rocked him all over again when they had told him Agent Carter had disappeared in 1947 and that all attempts to locate her had come up empty until she was presumed dead. Steve could not prove it, but he was fairly certain she had been assassinated, silenced for her part in their efforts to win the war...and her part in the unleashing of Captain America on HYDRA and the Red Skull.

No grave to visit, and no end to her story save a question mark. On the worst nights, he would lie awake and wonder if she had died alone and scared, without even a voice on the radio to keep her company as she went into the last dark. He, at least, had had hers. 

_I should never have made her listen to that_ , he fretted constantly. _I should never have made her listen to me die..._

He wondered how many nightmares _he_ had given _her_.

But, he had told himself, she had made her mark. She had founded the agency that had become SHIELD, and she had been a vital instrument in the work he and his Commandos had done during the war, and that was worth more than some cozy life with him at home, a Saturday night dancing at a nightclub. Peggy had deserved more than that, he thought. She had been out to change the world, and without him tying her down, she had had the chance.

Or so he had thought--until he had seen the memorial in the Tower that was barely noticed by the people who passed by it every day on the way to their offices, their labs, their quarters. Until he had seen the final resting place of his compass--the last piece he had had of his beloved Peggy.

What Steve hadn't told anyone--save Pepper Potts, who was an absolute vault of secrets and had never told any of his, not even to the man whose bed she shared--was that right before he and Natasha had caught this mission, he had made a pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., specifically to the Smithsonian Institute. Raglan, in a display of saccharine sweetness that had made Steve's stomach bubble, had issued him a personal invitation to the unveiling of the exhibit focused on the Howling Commandos. He had issued the same invitation to any surviving members of the unit, he explained, and their families, along with the descendants of the ones they had lost. Steve had not been able to turn down such an invitation--he still felt a responsibility to his Commandos. And he admitted he was curious about the exhibit itself. 

He had stayed in the Tower the night before, and had taken the train to D.C. on his own the following morning to give himself plenty of time to arrive and get a hotel room before the private exhibition in the evening. Pepper had offered to accompany him, but he had politely declined, simply accepting the soda she offered him, claiming he needed the sugar, and asking her opinion on his suit.

Pepper had affectionately told him his suit was just fine, but the tie wasn't necessary. Steve had allowed her to unknot it and undo the top button on his shirt. She had rolled the tie neatly, informing him that she had taken the liberty of booking him a hotel room and it was all set for him to check in upon his arrival. 

Normally, Steve would have chastised her--Pepper was always trying to do things for him that Steve knew he could do himself--but he was so keyed up and emotional about the exhibit that he was grateful for her overprotective concern and simply thanked her.

He'd actually dozed off during the train ride, and thankfully had had no nightmares, simply shifting grays behind his eyes until he heard the conductor announcing his stop. 

He had checked into the hotel and unpacked his simple overnight bag, then washed up, combed his hair and ordered room service, although he'd found himself too nervous to eat much. Still keyed up, he'd misjudged the walk over and was the first to arrive, which had resulted in him having to spend a few truly uncomfortable minutes with Ichabod Raglan, whom he still wanted to sock in the mouth. However, the little man had seemed less brave without Fury behind him to menace (or in Steve's case, guilt) people into doing what he wanted. Raglan had made great pains to emphasize to Steve how well-kept the items in the exhibit would be, out of total respect for the Commandos who had donated them after their courageous service to their country. He wanted Steve to know that, he had said, so there was no reason to be upset, as Steve had "seemed" when Raglan had come to collect his compass, or when a rather large man had given Raglan a hard time over the collection of his father's hat.

Steve had felt his lips quirk up in a little smirk. It had comforted him to know that he hadn't been the only one to lose a sentimental item to this dog-and-pony show, and better still that the other person to try to stand up to Raglan had been a Dugan. That was the fighting spirit he was proud of. 

But the smirk had softened to a smile when Gabe Jones, assisted by a cane and by the strong arm of his grandson, had immediately halted his slow progress towards the exhibit and saluted him. Steve had not noticed how the old man's hand had shaken during the gesture; he saw his friend through the eyes of memory and returned the salute. The smile that Jones gave him as they shook hands was the one Steve remembered. He introduced himself to Jones' grandson, who went by the surname Triplett, and saw the same determination and pride in the younger man's eyes. 

"Sir," Triplett said respectfully, and Steve simply shook his head. 

Seeing Jones, however, was nothing like the shock Steve felt when his hand was grabbed and his arm pumped enthusiastically up and down by a blond man with eyes that sparkled with mischief, as though he were a child planning a prank instead of a grown man in a dark three piece suit, the easy grin and the scent of cigar smoke like experiencing Dum Dum's rise from the grave. 

"Good thing they gave me that serum," Steve had joked lightly, "or you might have broken my arm. I don't even have to guess."

The man had roared with laughter, startling some of the other guests momentarily before they had turned back to their own conversations. "Jim," he'd said, thankfully not offering to shake again. "Jim Dugan. It's an honor, sir. You're just the way Pop said you were. And we used to think he was full of it most of the time--we believed half of what he said and a third of what he told us." He had said this with a fond wink. 

Steve had chuckled softly. It was just Dugan's style to embellish everything into a tall tale better seen on the pages of a comic book. "I'm sure he just elaborated a little. Unless it was about an explosion. He was usually right about th--" He stopped. "I'm sorry, did you say Jim Dugan?"

The impish eyes had gone warm for a moment, and the strong hand had been sheathed in a pocket. "Well, it's James," he said. "James Carter Dugan, at your service, Captain."

Steve's vision had blurred for the sparest of seconds; he'd resolutely blinked to clear it.

"Pop insisted," Dugan had continued cheerfully. "Ma was furious. Spent the rest of our childhoods grumbling that she should have named my sister Margaret instead of Donna. Pop said that was her own fault."

"It's a real pleasure to meet you, James Carter Dugan," Steve had said quietly. "I hope you enjoy the exhibit. Would you excuse me?"

He had needed a minute to himself in the washroom after that, caught between laughter and tears. Had it been anyone else, he would have been surprised by the sentimentality of the thing, but not from Dum Dum. Knowing Dum Dum, Steve had been fairly convinced he'd threatened to name his son Margaret or Bucky, and his wife had settled on a frantic compromise (after, Steve hoped, smacking her husband upside the head). 

He'd looked at himself in the mirror and told himself it was only one evening and he had gotten through worse, to be strong for the men who this exhibit was for. He'd rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, washed his hands and gone back out there. 

By the time he'd returned, they had started admitting the guests into the exhibit, giving Steve a chance to bring up the rear and ensure he would be able to walk through alone. He had needed the privacy upon coming to the tribute wall to Bucky, the one that explained how he was the only Commando to have been killed in action. Before he could allow himself to grow upset over the biography stating that Bucky and Steve had been friends since childhood and had grown up together in Brooklyn, he'd jollied himself out of it but muttering softly to the image of Bucky they had chosen to accompany the tribute, "You're such a punk. They _would_ pick a picture that makes you look like a movie star." It had been enough to help him smile. 

It had been hard to walk past the displays, feeling the slight wrongness that came with the items being worn by mannequins, still and lifeless. In his mind's eye he could see the bandoliers moving as the Commandos marched, as they stealthily slipped through brush seeking cover. The hats had been all too perfect, too--unworn. Nothing had looked quite right to him.

Then...there she had been.

His field journal had been flipped to Poland. The sketch book, the ink on the pages now rusty with age and the graphite a ghost of its former self, had been open to Brussels. The compass had sat on top of the map like a set for a play, open.

Her face. Oh, but her eyes. 

Steve had steeled himself, reminding himself that he had known he would see this, fighting an urge to smash the case open and take the compass back. Bring her home. He had distracted himself by looking for the tribute to Agent Carter...

...and had found nothing more than a paragraph, the barest mention of the woman who had been instrumental in his selection for Project Rebirth, no mention of how _she_ had been the reason Captain America had been able to go behind enemy lines to rescue the men who would become the Howling Commandos. Steve's eyes had bounced back and forth desperately trying to find more of her in the exhibit, finding the Eisenhower jacket that had done little to hide her figure, the gored skirt that had been given such a sweet angularity by her hips and that the mannequin could do no justice to. There had been a tube of lipstick, with a blurb claiming Agent Carter had wholeheartedly embraced the "beauty is duty" spirit of the war effort--as if she hadn't spent most of her time running and gunning with the rest of them. That had been it. And that had been all--not even a photograph, save the one that was in his compass; no wonder Fury had been so insistent that Peggy would have had no presence in this exhibit had Steve not given that item up.

The final insult had come when the speakers had kicked in, replaying that godawful radio play from the late forties. _The Captain America Adventure Hour_. What a joke. The announcer's tinny voice had told the guests of the exhibit that the Commando's nurse was once more in need of rescuing, and then "Betty Carver" was saying, "Hit 'em again, Cap!"

Steve had felt a wave of dizziness, followed by nausea.

Had it been Bruce Banner who had gone into the exhibit, the Other Guy would have come out. Raglan had had an awfully smug look on his face, and Steve had fought a momentary but intense desire to knock it off of him, settling for a growl through gritted teeth:

"Fix. This."

Raglan had been visibly stunned--he had obviously been expecting praise or at least gratitude. "Captain Rogers--"

"A _footnote_ ," Steve had hissed, and it had caught the attention of the guests around them, who looked up from their conversations to listen. "An _afterthought._ Do you think she was just another WASP? Can't you read? Did you pick up even one history book before you set up this little circus? Do you have _any_ idea how important that woman was to our team? How _dare_ you do this?"

"Told him the same thing, Cap," Jim Dugan had supplied helpfully, smirking beneath his mustache. "A little less eloquently than you, though. Wouldn't you say so, Mr. Raglan?"

Raglan had been clearly remembering his first run-in with James Carter Dugan, and had visibly flinched.

Then there had been a steadying hand on Steve's tense arm--Antoine Triplett, Gabe Jones' grandson.

"Captain Rogers," Trip had said smoothly. "My grandfather had several similar... _observations_...about the exhibit, and we're about to take Mr. Raglan aside to discuss them." He'd dared to give Steve a wink. "May even ask Mr. Dugan to back us up." Relaxing into a sympathetic look, he'd added quietly, "Get some air, sir. You've been brave enough for one day."

Steve, touched by how well his Commandos knew him still, and how their spirits were living on in their descendants, had nodded slowly. "Thanks."

He'd turned on his heel and walked out, but he had not been able to calm down. He had gone back to the hotel, but eating and sleeping had been out of the question. He had not been able to shake the thought that after everything, he had let Peggy down, and the growing, heartbreaking feeling that they had given up a life together for nothing. All for nothing.

Fearing this sort of sleepless night, Steve had packed a t-shirt, shorts, thick socks and his running shoes. As the sun had risen over the Capitol, the inky blue-black of the night sky lightening to stingy grey, Steve had passed another runner, warning the man "On your left," for the first of several laps.

It had taken retired pararescueman Sam Wilson about thirteen miles--and thirteen laps--to get fed up, and it had been thanks to Sam, his sympathetic ear and the invitation extended to his group session, that Steve had been able to calm down enough to go home. 

Shaking the memories away, Steve looked down at the swinging needle of the compass, its empty lid. Slowly, he closed it. He knew where he was going.

Nowhere.

**

_Washington, D.C., 2016_

**

For someone whose entire career--and existence--predicated on being observant, Natasha had walked past the woman in Steve Rogers' compass in more than one place, and did not make the connection when she saw the same face in the newsreel footage on Tony's holoscreen. In fairness to the Widow, however, she had had no reason to pay close attention to the place where Agent Margaret Carter's photograph was, either in New York City--which was the original display and was currently in the lobby of Stark Tower, although it was more commonly called "the Avengers Tower" since what had become known as the Battle of New York--or in Washington D.C., where an identical display had been placed. The monument had been a fixture in the Tower since before Tony was born, and it had not inconvenienced him to preserve it during any remodeling he had done since taking full ownership of the building when he had reached age twenty-one; it was a thing his father had wanted and a thing it cost Tony nothing to keep. 

As for the one in D.C., that monument had been erected when SHIELD had set up shop in the nation's capital, although Nicholas Fury had been dismissive of the idea at the start. It was in fact Philip Coulson who had argued for the carrying on of tradition, and argued hard; as soon as the display itself was in place in D.C., Fury gained a fast reputation for using it to emotionally manipulate his agents into working harder, holding the names on the wall up as examples of who they were letting down, disappointing or betraying, depending on the director's angle. (This sort of emotional blackmail had not been Coulson's endgame, but he surmised that it was not the hill to die on and elected to simply be grateful Fury had put the monument up at all.)

It was in front of the D.C. monument one evening that one of the lab technicians, a serious-minded man in his mid-thirties named Gavril Petrovic, first chased down and then stopped Agent Maria Hill with a readout that looked familiar. And not Hill's favorite kind of familiar. 

_Why_ , Hill thought idly as she took the paperwork from the frowning Petrovic, who clearly expected to be scolded. _Why didn't I just take a job where I took lunch orders and picked up coffee for a bunch of pompous rich executives so I could have a 401K and be fed up with them by the time I was forty, like my mother?_

This was an off-the-cuff internal monologue that held no severity whatsoever--Hill had this thought (or a similar one) about once every two weeks, more if there were incidents like the one she was afraid Petrovic was currently bringing to her attention. Petrovic was not given to flightiness or panic; if he was stopping her with this at all, he clearly thought it was worth her attention.

"Where did this come from?" she asked, blue eyes scanning over the printout. "When was this?"

"Tonight," the tech said, a little nervously given the tense expression on Hill's face. "In New York, although the readings are similar to the...incident...in New Mexico some time ago."

Hill blinked at the printout. "More similar than I'd like," she agreed.

This was a huge understatement. The first time Hill--or anyone at SHIELD--had seen energy readings even remotely resembling these, it had culminated in the appearance of a giant killer robot seemingly powered by magic in New Mexico, the progress of which had taken a Norse god to halt. Not long after that, readings like these in New York had resulted in an army of alien beings mounting an attack on the city, with only the Avengers saving New York (and by extension, likely the world) from mass destruction. 

Now this.

"Agent Hill?" Petrovic asked, pushing his glasses up on his nose with a fingertip. "What do we do? Should we send out a field agent to observe?"

He was asking if it was a foregone conclusion that trouble was about to knock on their door, and given the past history of readings along this trend, Hill did not blame him. Giving it some thought, Hill exhaled slowly through her nose. "For now? Stand by. I have to make a phone call."

When Agent Hill said she had to make a phone call, there was only one person who would be on the other line, and Petrovic was more than little relieved to let the cup pass from him. He turned and hustled back to the safety of his lab, leaving Hill standing in the lobby reviewing the paperwork with a sinking heart.

Behind her, under the same photo that smiled enigmatically out from the twin of this monument in New York, was a small inscription, so lacking in fanfare that even Coulson's eyes now tended to skip past it when he crossed the lobby.

 _Agent Margaret "Peggy" Carter_  
_Our Founder_

**

_New York City, 2016_

**

Jemma Simmons was usually based in the D.C. offices of SHIELD, but she loved any chance she could get to work in the New York offices. 

For one thing, the New York offices were largely based in Stark Tower, which was just plain neat. Ninety percent of the state-of-the-art technology employed by SHIELD began life here, and whatever of the remaining ten percent was created on site in D.C. had roots in this building. Sometimes you could even see Tony Stark himself hustling his way through the halls, although he tended not to spend too much time with the field agents or even the lab technicians. Simmons and the colleagues she was friendly with theorized that Tony Stark's relationship with SHIELD was something he was doing for his father, the late Howard Stark, one of the original founders of the agency, rather than for himself. Still, there was way more chance of seeing one of the Avengers--any of the Avengers, not just Mr. Stark--in New York than in D.C. 

But the most exciting thing of all for Simmons was to walk the halls envisioned by her own special hero, the role model whom learning about had driven her to accept the offer from SHIELD when it had come to her--bedridden with scoliosis as a child, little Jemma had clung tightly to the idea that there was a big, amazing world beyond her bedroom, and if there was any opportunity for the adult Simmons to experience that world in ways most people hardly dreamed of, it was within SHIELD. And she had gotten the chance because of the vision of one woman--a woman! It thrilled Simmons to her fingertips--the original founder of the agency, who had vanished in 1947 and been presumed dead. On her first trip to the Tower, Simmons had spent a few quiet, respectful minutes at the monument for fallen agents, paying special attention to the old photograph that was set into the stone.

 _Agent Margaret "Peggy" Carter_  
_Our Founder_

Simmons was gutted by the idea that so little was known about Agent Carter. Captain Steve Rogers, the only one alive who had known Agent Carter personally, had neatly deflected all questions Simmons had posed to him on the rare occasions she had been able to interact with him, although he had always been unfailingly polite and had attempted nicely to placate her with vague stories of the agent's bravery during the war. It had finally occurred to Simmons that talking about Agent Carter pained Captain Rogers deeply, and she had relaxed her intense questioning of him--the disappointment at not being able to hear about her hero from someone who had known her personally was more easily dealt with than the bleak, almost heartbroken look that would bleed into the Captain's eyes despite his best efforts to hide it. 

Still, it gave Simmons a keen sense of delight to think that perhaps she was handling files that had once been touched by her role model, the woman who had opened this door for her. When Simmons had been seventeen with two PhDs, a thousand questions and no answers, an offer from SHIELD on the table, it was what she had learned about Agent Carter that had made her want to follow the road her predecessor had put her own feet on so long ago, made her confident that the answers she sought were somewhere down it. Agent Carter was the reason Simmons had the life that intrigued and excited her every day, the reason she wanted to eventually get out of the lab and take on field work someday. 

So of course, it was a bit of a shock for Simmons when she was staying late in the New York office one night and her hero very calmly exited the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WickedKitteh truly deserves co-author credit for this chapter. Both Daniel's speech and Steve's visit to the Smithsonian were her idea; I simply added some overblown, pretentious language here and there to remind everyone I am a hack. She is also to be credited with the amazing cameo by James Carter Dugan, which was tied with something on my career track for Best Thing I Have Heard All Week. She is amazing for putting up with me and playing this game with me. 
> 
> This chapter features characters (but not storylines) from "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.", most specifically Jemma Simmons (who indeed has two PhDs and a childhood in which she suffered from scoliosis) and Antoine "Trip" Triplett (who is indeed the grandson of Gabe Jones). References are also made to events taking place during "Thor", "Avengers" and "The Winter Soldier", but the canon is about to take a sharp divergence so if you're not in your safety harnesses, get in them. 
> 
> I mean, look who just walked out of the elevator.


	5. All The Smiles That Are Ever Going To Haunt Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma Simmons meets her hero. It does not go as expected.

** Chapter Two: All The Smiles That Are Ever Going to Haunt Me **

_At the end of the world or the last thing I see_  
_You are never coming home, never coming home_  
_Never coming home, never coming home_  
_And all the things that you never ever told me_  
_And all the smiles that are ever going to haunt me_  
_Never coming home, never coming home_  
_Could I? Should I?_  
_And all the wounds that are ever going to scar me_  
_For all the ghosts that are never going to catch me_  
_Never coming home, never coming home_  
_Could I? Should I?_

**(My Chemical Romance, _The Ghost of You_ )**

**

Jemma Simmons had been on her way back to her workstation with a styrofoam container from the deli around the corner and a bottle of water. She had nipped out to pick up a quick bite to eat because she planned to put in a late night on a rather exciting new upgrade to an experimental weapon her close friend and work colleague, Leo Fitz, had developed a few months back. They had come to New York to complete the work there because their agent-in-command, Phil Coulson, had an in with Tony Stark and was lobbying to get some of the very latest Stark Industries tech for use in their labs in D.C. rather than going through the usual delays and approval channels. If Fitz and Simmons (playfully referred to as one entity, "Fitzsimmons", by their team) could show how promising their weaponry was and how much they could benefit from upgrading their tech, it would be an easier sell for Coulson, and more likely that Stark would agree. 

Simmons was confident the weapon they had chosen for this upgrade and demonstration--a suppressive rifle used to incapacitate a hostile rather than seriously injure them--would perform to their satisfaction. Although, she had intended to come up with a better name for the silly thing--sometimes the things Fitz came up with as working titles were just plain ridiculous. However, all thoughts of Fitz, experimental technology, sleepy-sleep guns or the sandwich in her hand drained out of her head when the elevator arrived at the ground floor while she was still some distance across the lobby. 

Simmons heard the elevator give its soft _ping_ and looked up idly to see a woman, smartly dressed in a blue wool gabardine suit and a jauntily cocked red fedora, walk out of the elevator, turn and head out into the lobby, her stylish heels clacking as she went.

Simmons let her gaze drift distractedly ahead to the elevators, intent on getting back upstairs--then jerked her head back towards the woman so hard she strained a muscle in her neck.

It couldn't be, she thought. It _couldn't_ be.

The woman walked right past Simmons, then stopped a few feet away, glancing around the lobby as if it confused her. She looked towards the glass doors, set in the full-length windows that comprised the majority of the walls of the Stark Tower lobby, then back to the elevators, then back to the doors again. 

It took Simmons three tries to make her trembling lips call out, "Might I help you...Miss?"

She hadn't actually been expecting an answer--the woman had not noticed her as they had passed each other, and an apparition (or, a hallucination, which was far more likely; Simmons was a scientist, and despite all she had seen already in her young life, she did not believe in ghosts) would not be able to interact with her. But the woman did turn, head tilted slightly to appraise the person who had hailed her. Dark curls tumbled out from beneath the fedora, artfully styled and effortlessly glamorous. Her lipstick was red. 

"Good evening. This is slightly embarrassing, but I appear to have gotten off on the wrong floor," the woman said, and her voice was rich and smooth, slightly accented. Simmons fought a swoon, not just because of the dreamy implications of what she was experiencing but because there was no way it was actually possible. "I have put in a long day, and perhaps I was distracted. I must have pressed the wrong button. I'll just take the elevator down to the ground floor."

"This is the ground floor," Simmons said. "You're standing in the lobby right now. See?" She gestured around them to the twilight world outside the glassed-in room in which they stood. Cars were moving steadily by on the street beyond, and the lights of New York City were already glowing in earnest. 

The woman-- _Agent Carter_ \--followed the sweep of Simmons' arm, blinking her long-lashed brown eyes in confusion at what she saw. "We are on the ground floor?"

"Yes," Simmons said. "Follow me. I'll show you." Leading the way back to the elevator banks, she reached out to the wall between two of the four elevators and tapped it with her fingertips, bringing up one of the patented Stark holoscreens between them.

The woman's reaction was immediate--she stepped back in visible shock. "What--how--how did you--what is that?! How did you do that?"

"It's the floor plan," Simmons explained patiently, pointing to their location, which was marked with a glowing circle of sunset orange, its light shimmering into yellow in a regular cycle before going back to orange again. "See? Here we are. The lobby."

Spellbound, the woman reached towards the holoscreen. When her fingers brushed the dot that showed their location, the floor plan switched to an exploded view of the lobby they stood in. She jumped as if she had been shocked, but quickly recovered, examining the holoscreen more closely. 

"Did--did Howard--" As Simmons watched, the woman tried visibly to compose herself, and when she relaxed, it was into amused anger. "Bloody Howard. No wonder he's been looking so exhausted lately, if this is what he's been putting all his energy into. I wouldn't have thought such a thing possible, even from him. He should have told me, though. If anyone's going to need to know how to work whatever technology he laces into the foundation of this building, it ought to be me. He knows I hate surprises."

Simmons was more and more enchanted--and certainly more and more confused. "Did you mean Tony, ma'am?"

A faint crease appeared in the pale brow beneath the fedora. "No. This building belongs to Howard Stark." She nodded at the holoscreen, the lower right corner of which held the white logo reading "Stark Industries". 

"Technically, I suppose," Simmons said slowly. "But ever since I have come to work here, it's been the property of Tony--Anthony--Stark. Howard Stark's son."

This elicited an even more thunderstruck reaction than the holoscreen had. "Howard has no son." Again, the woman tried visibly to compose herself. "That we know of, anyway. I suppose there's a distinct possibility."

Simmons, who firmly believed in a scientific explanation for everything, even the appearance of a Norse god in New Mexico, was having trouble figuring out how exactly to quantify what was happening. On the surface, it seemed like she was talking to a woman who could not possibly be standing there, alive and youthful and thinking she was simply lost. However, the more she spoke, the more names she dropped, the more of her mannerisms she displayed, the more Simmons was convinced she was looking at something impossible and inexplicable, possibly even miraculous. 

"Agent...?" she asked softly, hardly daring to--hardly daring to what? Hope? Believe it? She wasn't sure. 

"All right, all right, a distinct _probability_ ," the woman allowed, brusquely, misunderstanding Simmons' questioning tone. "I told Howard...well, it doesn't matter what I told Howard, he never listens to me anyway, and he is a grown man who is allowed to make his own decisions. And mistakes." She sighed. "Do you know how this thing works? Would you be able to put in a call for me to Mr. Edwin Jarvis? He is Mr. Stark's butler, and I'd like to speak with him."

Again, Simmons was confused. "I can certainly get you to JARVIS from this screen or any control panel in the building," she said. "He's the operating system."

"He is the _what_?" the woman asked.

"The operating system," Simmons repeated, tapping the holoscreen again with deft fingers. "He runs the building. Watch. JARVIS, weather."

Immediately, the computerized voice flowed smoothly from the nanoparticle speakers. " _ **Good evening, Agent Simmons. The weather is cool with a slight breeze. The current temperature is fifty-nine degrees Farenheight, fifteen degrees Celsius. Humidity at sixty-six percent. Skies are mostly clear, and the moon is full. Will you be requiring a car service at all this evening?**_ "

"No, thank you, JARVIS." Simmons smiled at her companion. "See?"

The woman was looking around as if she expected the owner of the voice to pop out of a hiding place at any minute. "Where?"

Simmons blinked.

"Where what?"

"That _sounded_ like Mr. Jarvis...in a sense..." Her dark brows were working furiously now in her confusion. "But where is he?"

Simmons pointed at the screen. "Well, in here, but technically, he is all around us. As I said, he is the operating system that runs the building. So he's sort of everywhere. I mean, we don't call him _Mister_ , just JARVIS. Isn't that cute? Tony--Mr. Stark, I mean--came up with that." She beamed. "He had wanted to name it for his father's butler, since he was such a fixture while he--Tony, I mean--was growing up. I say 'it' because JARVIS is really an A.I., but he's so lifelike we can't help but say _him_ , you know? Anyway, Mr. Stark says it stands for _Just A Rather Very Intelligent System_. Don't you think that's brilliant?"

The woman-- _Agent Carter_!--did not look like she found it brilliant at all; she looked like she had realized she was in the middle of a nightmare. But before she could answer, the elevator pinged again, and the doors opened to release a rather keyed-up Leo Fitz, his hair disheveled as if he'd spent the last half hour impatiently running his hands through it.

"Honestly, Jemma, been waiting up there for got to be close to an hour now, and here you are jawing with a--"

Fitz's aggressive stride slowed to a stop, his eyes widening as he took in the woman in the blue suit and red hat. Realization dawned steadily on his face, and his head whipped towards the outer lobby--specifically to the monument--before jerking back towards the two women in front of him. " _Crivvens_!" he uttered under his breath, glancing at Simmons. "Jemma--is--are--what is going on here?"

"That," said Agent Carter, straightening her posture gracefully, "is something I would like to know too."

**

Peggy was beginning to agree with her compatriots that she was working too hard. Nothing had made sense since she had gotten on the elevator upstairs a quarter of an hour before. The lobby she stood in now was unfamiliar--light and airy glass instead of the sturdy walls she was used to--and the girl she had run into, whom she did not recognize, had just shown her a display of technology that blew away anything she had seen during the war or with the SSR in general. To say nothing of telling her that Mr. Jarvis was somehow trapped inside a computer--if that was even what she had meant; Peggy was unsure she was following the dizzy gyrations of the explanations--and that Howard had a son. A _son_! With whom? Why had she not been made aware of this? How could Howard not have told her? Surely they trusted each other more than that. 

However, she was beginning to think she had figured it all out. She had recently given Daniel leave to pull anyone from his West Coast team he thought might be a good fit, agents, admins, anyone. She would have final veto power on whether or not they were put into training, but she didn't begrudge him an opportunity to select people he worked well with for this initial group of agents, especially since he had been dropping hints--well, _he_ thought he was dropping hints; she viewed it more as dropping anvils--that he wanted to remain in New York and work with her. He had told her he had a few people in mind that he might like to call in, but they had been so busy for the last couple of weeks they had not discussed it further. She assumed these two were part of their little "exchange program". Moreover, both Daniel and Howard had told Peggy on multiple occasions that she had been overworking herself; she would not put it past Howard to shanghai Daniel and his holdovers--along with Mr. Jarvis via a cleverly hidden speaker of some sort behind some kind of projector--into playing a little trick on her to gaslight her into thinking she'd shot her bolt, in the interest of getting her to dial it back and rest, at least for a little while. Irritating, but she couldn't really fault them for being concerned. It was kind of them, if a bit cloying, and she would do her best not to take her exasperation out on these two young strangers.

Honestly. Howard, a son? Of course it was possible, given his...fondness...for the ladies, but what wasn't possible was such a thing escaping her knowledge or being withheld from her. Not after the last time she'd punched Howard in the face for keeping a secret...

"What is your name?" she asked the girl, trying to blink away the memories.

It was as if the young woman had been waiting her whole life to be asked the question. The girl drew herself up on a spine of steel, pride unfurling like a flag, and declared, "Agent."

Peggy, unbelievably, felt a smile threatening at this. "Very good," she said warmly. "Agent what?"

"Agent Simmons, ma'am," the girl said promptly. "Jemma Simmons. And this is Agent Leo Fitz," she added, proudly displaying her companion, who was still goggling at Peggy as though he had seen a ghost. In contrast to Simmons' sensible loafers, neat blouse, cardigan and a-line skirt, Fitz looked slightly disheveled, his shirt untucked over dark trousers, clumpy boots on his feet instead of wing-tips or anything more polished. Should he be taken on for training she would have to speak with him about that, most likely. It wouldn't do for her agents to look quite so unkempt. 

Steve never had, her mind reminded her unhelpfully. He had left that to Barnes--who had teased her over pinning her hair every day and teased Steve for spit-shining his shoes, but who had also been the first to sneak her paper clips nicked from the aide-de-camps when battle and marching had taken the last of her kirby grips. 

"Very good," Peggy said again, shaking the sad thoughts away more resolutely. "I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Agent Simmons, Agent Fitz. I am Agent--"

"Carter," the girl interrupted with excitement, warm brown eyes sparkling. "You are, aren't you? You're Agent Peggy Carter."

"Yes," Peggy said briskly, straightening her hat. "All right. Now that that's out of the way, would you please direct me to the exit?"

The girl's smile faded in surprise, as though Peggy had asked to be shown the nearest window to jump out of. "Exit?"

"Yes," Peggy said, impatience rising in her again. "Exit. Point of egress. Portal to the outside world. The door."

"But--but you can't _go_ ," Agent Simmons said in alarm. "You can't go now! You just got here! I've--I've not gotten to ask you anything yet!"

"Ask me what?" Peggy said. "Agent Simmons, you are not making any sense."

"Jemma," Fitz said urgently, widening his eyes and jerking his head to the side to indicate she should follow him. "May I speak with you for a moment, please?"

Simmons ignored her companion. "Agent Carter, please. You must not leave--not yet. Not simply because I don't want you to, but because it's safer here for you until we figure out what is happening here," the girl said, visibly trying to compose herself.

"What is happening here," Peggy said, "is that I have somehow gotten off on the wrong floor coming down from my new office space, but it is a small thing that can easily be remedied if you would be kind enough to show me the way out to the street so I might catch a taxi."

"New office space...?" Simmons said, looking not at Peggy but around at the walls and ceiling. "Oh my...you had just started, hadn't you? You'd only just begun!"

"I'll find it myself," Peggy muttered, losing her patience and turning on her heel.

Simmons predictably jumped forward and seized Peggy's sleeve. "Please, you mustn't," she said, more desperately this time. "Agent Carter--please. There's so much I want to ask you--there's so much I need to know."

Peggy was unnerved by being grabbed, but was too entirely confused by now to do anything but shrug the unwanted touch off. She reminded herself she was not at war, and it would not do to flip a young woman over her shoulder onto a tiled floor. Instead she asked, "Agent Simmons, are you all right?"

"I just--I never thought I would get the chance to meet you," Simmons said. "Speak to you. Please, you can't go yet. We could sit down--you must sit down. We could go to my workstation. I could get you a cup of tea, perhaps?" she chirped with happy inspiration.

" _Jemma_ ," Fitz said, more urgently. " _No_."

"Agent Simmons," Peggy said, smiling kindly at the so obviously flustered girl. "That is a lovely offer and even one I might take you up on if I had time to stay here, but I do not. I have had a long day, and I would like to rest up before my meeting tomorrow," she said. "We are on the verge of some very important developments with my agency. People are expecting me, and there is much to do."

"Agency," the girl breathed, her eyes as stars in the dim light, as if Peggy had said "Valhalla". 

This was simply getting too odd. "Good night," Peggy said, politely but pointedly, and turned to leave.

"Oh, but--but wait!" she heard Simmons call behind her as she strode out into the corridor. "Agent Carter, please--"

Luckily for Agent Simmons, Peggy only made it as far as the memorial that graced the front of the lobby. She stopped dead in her tracks, the click of her heels ceasing as the symbols on the wall caught her eye. 

Stepping slowly closer, like Bluebeard's wife about to open the forbidden door and discover the severed heads of all his former wives, Peggy read the legend on the monument. _Wall of Valor_.

Those words were familiar--it was an idea she had batted around with Daniel, Howard and a few of her other holdovers from the SSR. She had been very invested in the idea of honoring the fallen, not just because of Steve (although he had been a very big part of it and not a day went by that she did not think of him and all he had sacrificed for what was right and good) but because she had seen too many good men and women lay down their lives in defense of freedom and knew that anyone attempting to take on the mantle of protecting that freedom should know and respect their sacrifices. Daniel had been very on board with the idea, and none of the other potentials had contested it; their only concern had been funding for such a luxury, and Howard, who would have erected a monument for Steve and Steve alone, had waved it away and immediately offered to fund the entire project himself. 

"A way to honor their service, and their bravery, without which we would not be here today carrying on their work," Peggy had explained. "A...a...wall of valor, of sorts. Although I shall try to come up with a less melodramatic title for it."

Howard had smiled, his eyes warm with affection for her. "I dunno, Peg, I kinda like 'wall of valor'. Has a lot of pomp and bombast to it. What do you think, Hopalong?"

Daniel hadn't even blinked at the nickname Howard had given him early on (although Peggy would have bristled; she had found it rather insulting). His dark eyes were equally warm as they rested on her, listening to her plans for the agency's future. "I think 'wall of valor' suits it just fine."

Now she saw her own words carved into the marble, above the legion of symbols stretching to the floor. _Wall of Valor._

And _so many symbols_. So many _names_.

 _Too_ many names. Surely there hadn't been _this_ many casualties from the ranks of those she held most dear...

...had there?

She made a soft inarticulate sound and reached out helplessly towards one of them, one that she herself had planned to include on the wall from the very start. 

_Sergeant James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes._

His name was under a familiar symbol, the outstretched wings of the SSR's stylized eagle, and Peggy touched the cool marble on which it was engraved, taking a deep breath. 

"Bucky," she murmured affectionately, remembering the man's easy grin, his fierce protective streak when it came to Steve, how in down time they'd shove each other and tease, playing like puppies despite the war going on around them, how they would sometimes tell their memories to Peggy, opening windows onto their shared past for her to look through. She remembered Barnes flirting with her, playfully, never anything serious, because he wasn't blind; he had seen the way she looked at Steve, and it was in that friendly teasing that she had gathered he might have, somehow, approved. 

If they had only had the time.

 _Damn_ Howard. How had he done this so soon, without her noticing, _how_? Why hadn't he told her? He knew she hated surprises! She had wanted at least a dedication, some show of respect to those the Wall was supposed to honor, and here he'd gone full speed ahead without even asking her opinion on it. So typically Howard, but she was more upset by her own negligence and lack of attention to her surroundings. Maybe she really was working too hard. How had he gotten this past her, how had--

She stopped mid-thought, noticing a surprise of a far more unpleasant variety--there were years engraved onto the marble, above the panels engraved with the symbols and names. Years that _hadn't happened yet_. 

_1941-1963._

_1964-1981._

_1982-2001._

"Two _thousand_...?" Peggy whispered in utter disbelief. And there were names and symbols on each panel, too. _1941-1963_ was full. _1964-1981_ was full (!) and...

_2001-_

The last panel was incomplete. The names and symbols marched only about halfway down the marble surface. 

Room for more. 

Peggy blinked, closed her eyes, opened them again. The wall still stood. 

"Where am I?" she thought aloud quietly, but the better question was, of course, " _When_ am I?"

It just...it just seemed like such an awful lot of trouble to go to for a bit of piss-take. And even Howard, who drove her crazy, who meddled in everything, had respect for her even when he was trying to jolly her out of her own severity. But this was...

...this was bordering on _cruel_.

She looked up again and saw, like a horrible nightmare, the symbol she had drawn earlier in the evening

( _earlier in my lifetime_ )

( _earlier in history_ )

( _drew it decades ago_ )

( _drew it this evening_ )

( _where am I when am I_ )

in the bullpen of her new office space, the one that Daniel had asked about. The eagle in the circle, the blocky, outstretched wings. _That's my design. That's my..._

And then she saw the most chilling thing of all.

It was another name--it was the _first_ name, the first name that had ever been engraved onto the wall, and as such it had been given pride of place above the metal panels, centered on the marble, right beneath the words _Wall of Valor._

_Agent Margaret "Peggy" Carter_  
_Our Founder_

It was also the only name that was accompanied by a symbol _and_ a photograph.

 _Her_ photograph.

Oh, _that_ wasn't funny. That wasn't funny at all. And the whispering voice of doubt that had been slowly getting louder the entire time she had spent in this room kept reminding her that Howard would never be so cruel.

She forced herself to look at it, to find the trick. The photograph was a black and white picture from the war, which she liked, despite the insanity of everything that was happening. If she had had to guess, it had been taken at Camp Lehigh, and she was struck by a sensory memory so vivid she almost sank to her knees--the rough wool of her jacket as she pulled it on, her muscle memory of straightening her tie, adjusting her lapel pins. She remembered the scent of the grass, the feel of the sun as she strode out onto the parade ground, on her way to the first glimpse she'd ever have of the man who would become the Captain...

She closed her eyes for a second, missing those days with a sweetly throbbing ache of her heart--and then something occurred to her.

Eyes opening, she scanned the names on the panels with renewed interest. _Sergeant James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes. Airman Jonathan "Junior" Juniper._ A few names she knew. Many, many more names she didn't know. So many names. The SSR symbol. The hellishly familiar blocky eagle she had drawn--when had she drawn that?--names, symbols, names, symbols...

"It's not here," she muttered, brow furrowing in confusion. "It's not here."

Turning, she realized Agent Simmons had caught her up, trailed by the wary-eyed Agent Fitz. No longer interested in leaving for the moment, she repeated, more loudly, "It's not here."

They exchanged wary looks. "What isn't here?" Agent Fitz asked.

She blinked at them, shocked she even had to explain. _Captain Steven Grant Rogers_ was nowhere on the wall. Nowhere at all. And that didn't make sense--if Bucky Barnes was there, if Junior Juniper was there--

_\--if **I** am there--_

She shook herself physically out of these thoughts. "How dare you erect this monument and leave the Captain's name off of it?" she demanded. "Captain Rogers gave his life in service to humanity, and it is his values and his examples that my agency-- _this agency_ \--is founded upon. It is positively disgraceful that he is not listed here. I demand an explanation."

"...What?" Fitz asked.

Peggy's nostrils flared. This was like talking to a pair of hamsters. 

Simmons tried to be a little more articulate. "Agent Carter...why _would_ Captain Rogers be on the wall?"

Peggy was thunderstruck, her lips moving slowly and soundlessly around the words because she couldn't believe what she was hearing. _Why...would..._

Fitz spoke up again, and Peggy immediately wished he had stayed silent. "Agent Carter...all due respect...it's a _memory wall_."

"I know what it bloody well is, I came up with it," she snapped. "You are not answering my question."

Fitz looked at her in what she was coming to recognize as pity, which only made her angrier at him, and when he spoke it was with gentle patience, as though he were speaking to someone who had suffered a head injury. "A memory wall, Agent Carter. All of the agents listed here are...dead."

Peggy felt that familiar stab in her chest, and said through clenched teeth. "That _still_ does not answer my question."

The pity in Fitz's blue eyes was even fresher, even brighter. "Yes, it does."

They blurred in Peggy's vision--the pieces just weren't fitting--but she refused to cry in front of them. 

"How _dare_ you," she said softly, dangerously, when she thought she had ascertained their meaning. "How... _dare_...you."

It just wasn't _fair_. Steve had been listed as missing in action, and Peggy knew that, but she had, after a while, believed in her heart that he was dead. She could not believe that, if he had been alive and able to return to them--to _her_ \--that anything would have kept him from the Stork Club that Saturday evening at 8 o'clock. (She had gone, alone, and had gotten blind drunk, not dancing for a single song. Howard and his butler, Edwin Jarvis, had been the ones to collect her, driving her back to Howard's, where she had slept it off in a guest bedroom and subsequently had remained in bed for three days, a rarity for her.) Only death, she had reasoned, would have kept Steve from keeping that promise--and so she had told herself he was dead. To have these... _children_...twist the knife again, trying to stop her from moving forward, properly grieving--it was too much, even for one of Howard's attempts at piss-take. She could not allow herself any more false hope, could not face that heartbreak, night after night.

 _I want to go home_ , she thought suddenly, petulantly, like a vagrant child. _I've had enough. I'm going home._

"Get out of my way," she said in that soft, dangerous voice. "I'm going now."

"Agent Carter--"

"I'm going now," she repeated, louder. "Stand aside, please. Any further attempts to stop me will be met with force."

Simmons was visibly upset. "If you would just let us explain--"

"I," she said in that silken voice, "have had quite enough of your explanations."

Fitz made the mistake of trying to grab her first. However, he had not been prepared for her to retaliate, and when she simply dropped her handbag, twisted her wrist and seized his arm, using his own momentum to swing him into the side of the monument itself, it caught him completely by surprise; seizing his tousled hair, Peggy brought his head quickly down on the top of the marble, where it made a sound like a stick of butter falling to a tiled kitchen floor. She released her hold and he slid to the floor, poleaxed, eyes sliding shut.

"Fitz!" Simmons cried, dropping to her knees at her colleague's side and turning wide, stricken eyes to Peggy. "Why did you do that?"

Peggy set her mouth in a grim red line and strode past the fallen Fitz. Simmons scrambled to her feet to give chase, pulling a device from her pocket and pressing a button on it--an answering klaxon rang through the large, empty lobby. 

"Agent Coulson!" Simmons shrieked into whatever she was holding in her hand. "I need assistance! Front entry, emergency! Requesting backup! Requesting back-- _uhhhhh_!"

Peggy, instead of trying to dodge Simmons' advance, simply sidestepped, curled her fingers and slammed the heel of her hand up under the younger woman's chin. Simmons' teeth clacked as her head rocked back, the signals from her spine to her brain interrupted. Peggy finished the job with a right cross, and Simmons crumpled to the floor, the little walkie-talkie clattering across the tiles as her hand relaxed. 

They would be fine, Peggy thought wearily. They would wake up shortly, with a splitting headache apiece and a shared regret that they had ever underestimated Agent Peggy Carter. 

However, the damage had been done. Whatever alarm young Agent Simmons had rung had not simply started the klaxon that was still blaring--it had also begun a sequence of hydraulics that were lowering thick, metal shutters on the doors and windows. They looked like blast shields, and Peggy knew that if she did not exit the building right now, she would be trapped.

She took a precious moment to collect her handbag, which had opened when she had dropped it, spilling its contents all over the floor. She grabbed her wallet and compact, stuffing them back into the bag, then seized her Walther PPK, which she had not wanted to pull on the young agents, even to scare them. Her tube of lipstick had rolled along the tile and there was not enough time for her to retrieve it--there was no longer even enough time to get to the door. 

Drawing the Walther, Peggy breathed a quick apology to Howard and fired at the nearest full-length pane of glass that served as a wall, rather than try to exit through the doors. The glass starred, spiderwebbed, but held; she cursed herself, thinking she should have known better than to assume Howard--or his _son_ \--would leave a building so open to intruders. 

She was out of time. There was nothing for it but to jump. Crossing her arms over her face to shield it, Peggy ran full tilt for the broken window and leaped, using her feet like pistons to propel herself through the glass. Her momentum was enough to break through, and it exploded outward in a spray of glittering shrapnel. Peggy hit the sidewalk hard, rolled, the tiny teeth of the littered shards tearing at her suit, her stockings, her skin. 

Panting, she got carefully to her feet, just in time to see the blast shields lock into place with a heavy, metallic _clank_. 

Her lipstick was still in there, and she realized her hat had fallen from her head in the scuffle and was lying somewhere on the tiled floor between the Wall of Valor, the fallen agents and her point of egress. 

Shaking the ridiculous thoughts away--they were only things, things could be replaced even if the hat had cost her almost fifteen quid--and wondering if this was how it felt to go insane, she spared one last second to yank a few pieces of glass out of her scraped hands and bleeding legs. Then she was running, running into the night down a street that should have looked familiar, but did not, flashing into view and out again every time she dashed beneath the halos of light from the streetlamps, the LEDs much brighter than the arc-sodium lamps she was used to, the sound of her heels on the pavement fading away as the klaxon shrieked its rage at her escape.

**

It would have been a bad day for Phil Coulson even before he had received the garbled distress call from Agent Simmons--he was in the middle of a meeting with Nick Fury in the New York offices that had essentially turned into a long inquisition about his competence as a team leader. He had cringed inwardly as he had presented his arguments for his team members and heard how shallow they sounded even to his own ears. 

"You're telling me Ward is as good as Romanoff?" The way Fury managed to arch a brow over his eyepatch had always alternately unnerved and irritated Coulson. "That's like comparing a cap gun to a Dragunov. The man's aim is good, but his focus isn't. And don't even get me started on the egregious security breach you're calling a 'new recruit'."

Coulson had anticipated this, but he was not looking forward to the argument he'd promised himself he'd make. "Skye is a skilled computer technician--"

"Which in English means a hacker," Fury interrupted boredly, "or at least she thinks she is. _I'm_ thinking she's a granola bar who knows a few backdoors into poorly-guarded systems that anyone in our employ could figure out how to crack, whose grand use of this talent amounts to spending her time trying to save chipmunks from toxic waste. She stupidly stumbled onto something that she had no right surviving, and _your_ response was to give her our house keys and let her come over to play with our toys. Is that it?"

Coulson was furious at how this had been spun--and ashamed that part of himself couldn't argue with the recklessness with which he had brought Skye into the inner circle. It also didn't help that Ward and Skye were already making eyes at each other, which would only further Fury's arguments that Skye was a liability and Ward could not be trusted to stay focused. 

Luckily for Coulson, both he and Fury were interrupted by the click and jingle of his walkie-talkie, which he carried on him at all times. Fury nodded at Coulson to take the call, but did not make any indication that he would be given privacy. Coulson did not mind this; if it was a real emergency, Fury would like as not have to be brought in anyway.

And it did sound like an emergency. In fact, the agent used that exact word as the screams came over the walkie:

" _Agent Coulson! I need assistance! Front entry, emergency! Requesting backup! Requesting back-- **uhhhhh**_!"

With an inarticulate cry of pain, Simmons ceased speaking; there was a banging sound, as if the walkie itself had fallen on a hard surface. There was a sound traveling swiftly away from the device, a rapid sharp clicking sound, getting fainter as it put distance between itself and the walkie-talkie. It was getting harder to hear because the alarms were going off, a loud siren that notified all employees in the building that a lockdown was in effect. 

Then a loud report--unmistakably a gunshot, echoing in the large and empty lobby, with all that tile and glass for the sound to bounce off of. Fury was already out of his chair, and Coulson stood as well.

Finally, a horrible shattering sound, like a thousand crystal glasses falling to the floor, and then there was nothing but the alarm, wailing between bursts of static.

"Simmons?" Coulson said into his own walkie, phrasing it like a question and then correcting himself. "Simmons. Status report."

Fury's visible eye was steely; Coulson could see the gears already turning in his head.

"Simmons. Are you all right?" Coulson tried again. "Jemma! Answer me."

Fury, unbelievably, got his last shot off as he circled his desk to follow Coulson out into the corridor: "Care to make any other arguments for the elite team you're helming?"

Coulson allowed his anger to show on his face. Jemma Simmons might be seriously hurt, there was obviously a security breach of some kind, and Fury still had to have the last word.

Typical.

**

Coulson and Fury found Simmons in the lobby, along with a downed Agent Leo Fitz. They were already coming slowly back to their senses, and did not appear to be seriously hurt. Ignoring Fury's snort of contempt, Coulson knelt by the dazed Simmons, who was sitting up carefully, her expression of pain giving way to one of horror as she looked around the lobby. 

"She's _gone_ ," Simmons cried in distress. " _Oh_ , she's _gone_!"

"Who?" Fury demanded immediately. "Who is gone, Agent Simmons?"

"What happened, Jemma?" Coulson added, more gently--but not much. 

Fitz had regained his feet and stalked over to where Coulson was helping Simmons to hers. "Thankya, Jemma. Thanks a big bit," Fitz fumed, accent thickening in his rage. "Your precious hero just handed our arses to us."

"Yes." Simmons dabbed at her bleeding lip, an almost insane light of admiration in her eyes, which only looked more off-kilter by the tufts of hair that had come loose of her ponytail. "Isn't she _wonderful_!"

"I'm not speaking to you," Fitz hissed, pacing restlessly back and forth. "Why don't you go on out there and look for her? Maybe she'll give you a job, yeah? After we get _sacked_ for letting _her_ of all people leave the building without explaining to us _what in the bloody hell she's doing here_? And looking like that! She should be almost a hundred years old by now!"

"Yes," Simmons said in fascination. "She doesn't appear to have aged a day! How do you suppose--"

"Agents." Coulson forced a note of cold authority into his voice. Fury was cracking his knuckles, which was a sure sign that he was occupying his hands to keep them from strangling someone--currently, the two young agents in front of him. "What has happened here? Who are you referring to?"

Despite a split lip and the glassy eyes of having recently suffered a head wound, Simmons actually smiled. "Agent Coulson, I'm not sure you'd believe me if I told you."

"I don't know exactly how to explain it either," Fitz grumbled. "I wasn't even there for the whole thing." Turning to his companion, he asked, "Where did you _find_ her, Jemma?"

" _She_ found _me_ ," Simmons retorted. "I was coming back in with my sandwich when she got off the elevator."

"The _elevator_?" Fitz said. "She was already _in the building_? For heaven's sakes, _where_? What floor did she come from?"

" _I_ don't know, Fitz, I wasn't exactly thinking of asking her what she'd been doing for the last hour as opposed to the last _seventy years_ ," Simmons shot back.

"Well, maybe if you had kept your head instead of _fangirling_ all over her like a total squeeb, we mightn't be _in_ this mess!" was Fitz's argument.

"Who?" both Coulson and Fury demanded before Simmons could defend herself. 

The two young agents showed agreement for the first time since waking--they both turned their heads in the same direction--towards the Wall of Valor that they had been found collapsed near. 

Fury took charge, biting off his words as if they were the end of one of his cigars. "You two might want to get your heads straight, because if you can't I'll be happy to knock them together until you can. We are under lockdown--which was initiated by you, Agent Simmons, so unless you can come up with a good explanation for why you've trapped us all in here while the person you claim is responsible for this disturbance is out in the city at large, I'm holding you personally responsible." 

Simmons blanched, her face going the color of cottage cheese.

"And you," Fury said, rounding on Fitz. "You're responsible right along with her. You let a hostile with a gun not only incapacitate the two of you, but escape with her weapon after compromising the security of this building. Where'd you learn to be a field agent? Clown college?"

Coulson frowned--this remark was clearly made for his benefit, and Fitz did not help by shooting him a guilty look. This was _not_ helping his case for his team being mature, rational adults who could be counted on to act with the proper decorum and intelligence when presented with threatening situations. 

"Don't look at me," he told Fitz. "I'm in agreement with the Director. You two had better start explaining in a way that makes sense, or I can't help you here."

Simmons' face collapsed into a troubled concern. "I'll try my best to explain, but I warn you, sirs, it won't make any more sense after I've finished telling you the story."

By the end of Simmons' tale, all questions of Phil Coulson's competence were forgotten as Fury gave him carte blanche to pull whoever was necessary--including any available Avengers in the general vicinity--to rectify the situation they now clearly had on their hands. This did not improve Coulson's day in the slightest. 

**

Clint Barton could have solved the problem rather quickly, if he had gotten Coulson's call even five minutes sooner. 

Clint, while a music fan in general, did not bother with headphones when he was out walking Lucky, for the obvious reason. At least, it was obvious to him; perhaps not so much to the other Avengers. He wasn't sure Stark had even paid attention to him for enough minutes at a time over their entire time as teammates to discern the reason even existed. Natasha knew, because of course Natasha knew, but that was all right; she had never treated him any differently for it--only for the usual reasons of his childlike sense of humor, his acid tongue and his aversion to anything that could even remotely be considered adulting.

He was enjoying his night. It was cool and clear, and he had his best buddy (outside of Natasha) with him. Lucky looked up adoringly with his single eye, jaws slightly open in that dogsmile that told Clint he was just as happy to be out as Clint himself. Clint spent more time at the Tower than any Avenger save Tony himself. Steve had insisted on having his own place and had rented an apartment in Brooklyn, which Clint had never been to; Steve liked his privacy and only tended to stay at the Tower for convenience or when he wanted company he could trust absolutely. Natasha just couldn't sit still, period, and Clint had been to her pied-a-terre in the Village plenty of times. Banner was often traveling. Getting Stark to agree that "Pizza Dog" was allowed in his high rise cathedral of money had been a battle, but one Clint hadn't been sorry he'd undertaken. Stark had caved faster than he'd thought, anyway. Lucky was just so damn cute. 

He and the dog were turning a corner close to the Tower when he was nearly knocked off his feet by a woman running full pelt down the block. Lucky yipped as the leash was pulled tight, straining his collar. Clint had an instant's impression of red lips and the remains of perfume as he caught his balance. She had fared worse, skittering to one knee from the force of the impact, dark hair half-hiding her face. Her blue suit was smart, if a little disheveled--there seemed to be dirt and grit dusted across it. She reached for a red handbag that she'd dropped to the ground in the confusion.

"I--I beg your pardon," she said, and her voice was well-bred, if strained. "Excuse me--" And then she was up on her high heels and running again. He wasn't sure she had even taken the time to look at him before issuing her apology and tearing off.

"Whoa, wait," Clint said. "That was a hard knock. Are you--" But she was already gone. He could hear her high heels on the concrete like gunshots, fading off into the distance. "Hey, are you okay?" Clint called, knowing he wouldn't get an answer.

Anyone running that fast was usually running from something, so Clint immediately went on the alert. Glancing in the direction from which the woman had come, he checked to see anyone rushing to pursue her, but the street was fairly empty. He looked around, listened. No sirens, no screams. No one looked to be in a hurry; no one seemed to have even noticed anything odd, but that was New York for you. 

Lucky woofed, and Clint knelt down by his pet, giving him a good ear-ruffle and a cuddle. "It's okay, boy. Sorry I pulled on you. Thought I was gonna fall..." He trailed off as he saw a few spatters of red on the sidewalk, still wet. "Is that blood?" he wondered aloud as Lucky sniffed the spatters. The dog lifted his head and whimpered when the earpiece Clint always took on these walks started to ping. Lucky knew that sound usually meant the fun was over, and they hadn't even gotten to pizza yet.

"Dammit," Clint muttered in genuine frustration. The Rangers were playing tonight, and Pepper Potts was in New York, which meant there was no chance of Stark bemoaning the hijacking of his precious state-of-the-art entertainment system that Clint had planned; he'd be busy with his own diversions tonight. So Clint had decided to commandeer the rec room, and had invited three of his favorite guests to watch sports with: pizza, beer, and Darcy Lewis--he could see the latter rounding the corner at the end of the block with two big pizza boxes balanced in her arms. She waved.

"Come on, Barton, we're gonna miss them dropping the puck!"

Jogging towards her with Lucky in tow, Clint reluctantly hit the button to activate the earpiece. "This had better be good, Coulson. I have the night off."

" _No one has the night off anymore_ ," Coulson said flatly over the tiny speaker. " _We're on lockdown_."

" _Lockdown_?" Clint asked incredulously. "What the hemorrhaging hell for?"

" _Let me worry about that. We're trying to get the building unsealed, but we need eyes out and boots on the ground in the meantime._ "

"I'm supposed to watch the game with Darcy," Clint tried, as if he were a child trying to get out of doing his chores.

" _Darcy's being called in too. We need her in the lab as soon as the building is open, so if she's with you, tell her to report here immediately. Meanwhile, you're staying out in the field._ "

"Get Stark to do it," Clint groused. They could always go back to his in Bed-Stuy and watch the game there. He could reheat the pizza in the oven or the microwave, and the TV was a hell of a lot smaller, but damn it, he did not want to deal with this sort of thing tonight. "You don't even know where I am."

" _What matters is that you are not in **here** which gives you an advantage over us right now_ ," Coulson snapped. He sounded stressed, and Clint wondered exactly what was going on. " _So do your job. I need you to locate and detain a person of interest. Female, brunette, brown eyes, between 5'5'' and 5'7''. Last seen wearing a blue skirt suit and blue high-heeled shoes._ "

Something occurred to Clint. "Blue skirt and jacket? Curly hair? Red lipstick?"

" _That's right_."

"...Fuck me," Clint muttered in equal parts wonder and chagrin.

" _I've told you a thousand times, Barton_ ," Coulson said before signing off, " _you aren't my type_."

"Guess I should have taken up the cello then," Clint hollered at the earpiece, but Coulson had already broken the connection. "Ah, _fuck._ "

"What's going on?" Darcy said, having walked down the block to meet him halfway. The pizzas in her arms smelled incredibly appetizing and the boxes were still warm. Clint wanted to scream in frustration. 

"I don't know. The building's on lockdown. Coulson wants you to go in to the lab for something, but won't tell me what. I've got to stay out here and chase someone down."

"But..." Darcy's eyes were adorably huge and sad; she held up the boxes. "But pizza. But hockey."

Lucky whimpered in agreement. 

"I know, I know," Clint groused, shoving the leash at Darcy. "Look, can you take him? I gotta hustle. She's already got a huge head start on me. Man, this _sucks_. Save me a slice, would ya?"

"The hell I will," Darcy huffed, taking the leash. "Come on, Lucky, we're gonna go eat all this pizza in my lab and not share with Clint when he gets back. If he gets back."

"Hey!" Clint exclaimed. "It's not my fault the building's locked down!" He glanced at Lucky. "You too, pal? You'd take her side? My own dog?"

Lucky panted hopefully up at Darcy. It was very obvious, he thought, that he would always take the side of pizza.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scarlett's notes:
> 
> If Coulson's meeting with Fury about his team and how they work sounds like piss-take, it is. I'm human. Don't worry, I won't make a habit of it. 
> 
> While it's not said outright, the weapon that Simmons is referring to in her internal monologue is the "Night-Night Gun" from "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." season one, which is eventually upgraded to the I.C.E.R. Similarly, the Wall of Valor is an AoS inclusion.
> 
> Airman Jonathan "Junior" Juniper was the first Howling Commando to be killed in the comics ( _Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos_ #4, 1963), and at the time the death of a major character was still a big deal (Marvel has made it a point in the comics that Fury is still haunted by Juniper's death). _Agent Carter_ paid homage to the impact of Juniper's death by having him killed by one of the young girls in the Black Widow program in the season one episode "The Iron Ceiling".
> 
> WickedKitteh is so good at getting inside Clint's head. I keep knocking stuff over when I try to go in there.


	6. I Can't See New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peggy Carter is: Lost In New York

**Chapter Three: But I Can't See New York**

_And you said you would find me here_  
_And you said you would find me even in death_  
_But I can't see New York_  
_As I'm circling down through white cloud_  
_Falling out and I know his lips are warm_  
_But I can't seem to find my way out_  
_My way out of this hunting ground_

**(Tori Amos, _I Can't See New York_ )**

**

Gasping with the aftershocks of pleasure, Tony rolled onto his back, gathering Pepper to his chest rather than put his arms behind his head in the classic expression of macho pride, partly because he knew acting smug after sex annoyed her, but mostly because when the love was this good he was reluctant to break contact with her. "Do you hear bells, Pepper? Because that was amazing."

"That's the _alarm_ , Tony!" Pepper shrugged out of his embrace and pulled the sheets to her chest, tucking them under her arms just in time for a pop-up holoscreen to make an unwanted interruption with an incoming call. 

" _Oh, for God's sake_!" Phil Coulson's mouth bent in a grimace as he turned his face away upon being confronted with a disheveled and...stark...Tony Stark.

Running his fingers through his mussed hair, Tony grabbed his own handful of sheet, but made it a point not to hurry. "Look, you don't want these things to happen, call like a normal person. What the hell, Phil?!"

" _You think I would risk seeing you naked if it wasn't an emergency?_ " Coulson shot back, then collected himself, as if he had suddenly remembered that he wasn't just talking to Tony. " _I apologize for the interruption, Ms. Potts._ "

"Whatever, Phil," Pepper muttered in mild annoyance and affronted modesty, making sure the sheets were tucked securely beneath her arms. "This had better be an emergency."

" _Of **course** it's an emergency!_ " Coulson reiterated. " _I get that you're...preoccupied...but didn't you hear the alarms? We're on lockdown_."

"Correction. _You're_ on lockdown," Tony sneered. "I go wherever I want."

" _Exactly, and that's why we need your help right now,_ " Coulson said flatly. " _Someone exited the building that shouldn't have. We're trying to track her, but she's on foot and moving erratically. It's imperative that we bring her back in. Priority One._ " 

"Go get Nat to do it," Tony said dismissively, pulling a pillow over his face. 

Pepper took the pillow gently away from him, reminding him, "Natasha is deployed with Steve. Remember?"

Tony muttered a curse. He'd forgotten; Natasha and Steve had been gone for weeks and he had become used to not seeing them on a regular basis. "Ugh, fine," he huffed, like a bratty child. "Do you have anything for me to go on, Phil? Bioscan, closed circuit?"

JARVIS chimed in. " _ **I may be of some assistance with that, sir. Agent Coulson has uploaded all monitor control to me. I have a visual of the target along with a heat signature, obtained from our instruments before the lobby's security was breached.**_ "

"So...your lockdown is trapping everyone _except_ the person you want to detain in our building?" Pepper asked, unable to keep the judgment out of her voice. 

" _The fugitive managed to slip the defenses, yes,_ " Coulson admitted, and he at least had the sense to look a little embarrassed. " _By the way, we owe you a glass lobby wall._ "

Pepper sighed, putting a hand over her eyes. Phil should have known better than anyone how much paperwork was involved bringing contractors in to replace property damage. And even if that hadn't been under her job description, the duty would have fallen to her anyway. Tony did not have the attention span for paperwork.

"You're gonna owe me a lot more than that for interrupting me on my personal time to have me bring in one of your circus acts, Phil," Tony said.

" _On that note, I should probably warn you,_ " Coulson said in an agreement of sorts, " _we're getting readings incredibly similar to Asgard on this one. I would proceed with extreme caution and all deliberate speed._ "

"Jeez, no pressure or anything," Tony snorted. "Thanks, Phil." Raising his voice as the holoscreen blinked out, he said, "JARVIS, up for a casual evening fly-by?"

" _ **Very good, sir,**_ " the AI responded, " _ **although you may want to put on something more suitable for flight conditions.**_ "

"Or anything suitable for flight conditions," Pepper joked wryly from the warm bed Tony was loath to leave.

Pointing a finger at her like a pistol as he pulled on shorts with his other hand, he said, "Hey, don't joke about that. I tried this in boxer briefs once. Chafing isn't even the word." Smiling fondly at his adorably tousled and flushed girlfriend, he leaned in to kiss her and said, "Keep the bed warm for me, will you, Pep?"

She smiled. "Yes, Mr. Stark." Then, more softly, she added, "Be careful."

"You know me."

Pepper's smile became wry. "Yes, I do. So...minimal property damage?"

Shrugging into a black t-shirt and tapping his arc reactor through the cotton, he deadpanned, "Ow. That hurt me. Right here."

Pepper's answer to that was to throw a pillow at his face.

**

Hell.

She was in hell. She was sure of it. 

_The elevator_ , Peggy thought in a daze. _The elevator fell, and I died. The elevator fell and I died and this is hell._

For an instant, she saw it so clearly in her mind's eye, as though she were looking at it from above--the shattered elevator car, her best blue suit shredded, body mangled from the impact, eyes mercifully closed, mouth red with a mixture of lipstick and blood.

But the small wounds on her arms and legs were bleeding; she could feel her heart pounding and her lungs aching as she ran. She'd bumped heads with the man she'd knocked into and could feel a knot rising on her brow. This felt... _real_.

The _noise_. The _lights_. The _crowds_.

While Peggy did not know it, her feet were following the same fated path of Steve Rogers' as he'd fled the building he'd woken up in the first time after the ice. Her lungs burned and a stitch pulled at her side, but she kept running, horrified by the sound of traffic and the glare of the neon lights all around her.

 _Had_ she thought New York City in 1947 overcrowded and busy? Had she _really_?

As always while in crisis, her thoughts went to Steve, and she employed a trick she had relied upon since girlhood--a lecture, from herself, to herself, with love. Love of the toughest kind, as Margaret Carter was and would always be her own strongest critic and the one she most consistently failed to impress. 

_Now you get a hold of yourself_ , she thought sternly. _Steven Grant Rogers weighed ninety-eight pounds soaking wet and he got into that chamber without a backwards glance, and when the pain seemed too great and you shouted to shut the machine down he said No--he assured you and all present that he could stand it and he was right. He stepped out of that chamber and the assault on his senses must have been overwhelming--the color, the oxygen, the sound!--and his very first act as the Captain was to chase down and catch a bloody Hydra agent in bare feet and a body he had only just been given the keys to. That man rose to every challenge, and he credited you with helping him do it. Something is going on here--something big--something incredible and dangerous--and all you have managed to do is bolt like a blinkered pony who's broken her tether. Now are you Peggy Carter, the woman who says "I know my value", or are you Betty Carver, the woman who says "Oh, what a lovely day to mend these pants!"?_

The mention of the hated Carver character, even in an internal monologue, was enough to shame Peggy into getting a grip on herself. As for the thought of Steve, dead or alive, she herself would die before disappointing him, and that helped even further. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, then exhaled, opening her eyes to take in the situation properly.

A few people had given her curious glances when she had been running helter-skelter through the streets, but the minute she stopped, they looked right past her. That was fine; that was familiar; that was New York, then and now, and Peggy Carter was sadly used to being looked past. Now it was a blessing.

People flowed around her as though she were a rock in a river. She had never felt further from the sight of the typical men's look of shirt, tie, suits, hats. They wore blue jeans or t-shirts--or satin shirts, leather pants, bomber jackets or workout clothes. There seemed to be no two that conformed to the same "look". Their hair was long, tied in buns or blowing free, buzzed close to the head, or nonexistent. And the women--the women seemed to be following the same standard--their hair was long and straight, or cropped close to the head as a man's might have been, or all the colors of the tropical fish Peggy had seen on her one and only visit to the New York Aquarium after the war. They wore men's trousers, or business suits like hers, or dresses that amounted to ballgowns on the busy city streets. Their makeup was spangled and sparkling, overstated and unapologetic, and man and woman alike seemed willing to paint their faces. 

For once, Peggy Carter felt herself in the rare and interesting position of not standing out for either her clothes or her gender. Not even a little bit. 

The cars--oh, Howard would have been awed at these cars. Such sleek lines and shining paint, and the colors--cherry red, electric yellow, burnt orange, gleaming chrome and tinted windows. As she watched, a lime-green, low-slung vehicle pulled up to the curb, its door swinging up instead of out like something out of a science-fiction pulp magazine. A young woman exited the vehicle, exposing a slender denim-clad leg, then tugging on her soft-looking jumper as she gained her feet in riding boots. Swinging long, straight hair over her shoulder, she turned to smile at the driver, who was in a button-down shirt and slacks, his collar loose, no tie. 

"We found a parking spot," he told the woman with a laugh as he got out of the car. "Quick, let's play the lottery before our luck runs out!" He reached for her across the bonnet of the vehicle, palm up, but instead of taking his hand, the girl slapped it with her own. They both laughed, and then the man circled the car to greet the lady properly with a kiss.

Peggy turned her face away respectfully, but couldn't help but notice no one else seemed to be paying attention to the couple but her. Either way, the odd exchange was calming somehow. Nice.

And it was nice to know some things hadn't changed, like the difficulty of finding parking in New York.

Turning her attention to the shops, she was amazed at the items displayed in the windows. A cosmetics shop displayed makeup in a thousand rainbow colors, her eye drawn from a pearly set of lipsticks to a twinkling galaxy of glittery eye powders. A few doors down, mannequins were dressed in vivid satins, silks, or what looked like some sort of stretch fabric, gleaming as brightly as the cosmetics under the overhead lamps. Next to that was a shop that sold appliances of some kind, and this window interested her most of all--it looked like the inside of one of Howard's notebooks sprung to life. Tiny machines with screens that lit up, and cameras that could fit in the palm of one's hand, and--

" 'Selfie stick'?" she heard herself asking aloud. "What in the bloody blue blazes is a selfie stick?" Wrinkling her nose, she added to no one, "What in the bloody blue blazes is a 'selfie'?"

It was equal parts comforting and maddening to know she was talking to herself on a busy street and no one was paying any attention to her at all. It was occurring to her that the things she was marveling at were commonplace to the passersby--as commonplace as a woman speaking her thoughts aloud to no one.

Raising her glance higher, she felt herself shudder at the brightly lit screens set atop the buildings--like the motion pictures she was used to, but in such bright color, filmed so quickly, so smoothly, one into the next--hawking perfumes, shoes, confectionaries.

"That's it," she murmured as one of the screens flashed an image of a pretty, all-American girl drinking a Dr. Pepper, dueling with a similar ad featuring young men in a park drinking Coca-Cola directly across the street from it. "I'll go--yes, I'll--"

Glancing at the street signs, she was able to pinpoint her location and realized with some relief that she was not far from a place that would be comforting, where she could sit and sort all this out.

Or, so she thought.

Ten minutes, half a dozen blocks and an avenue later, the momentary comfort at seeing a familiar street sign in passing--Broadway--was dispelled by the unwelcome sight of what looked to be a convenience store where she had hoped to find the L and L Automat.

"I...I don't understand," Peggy muttered, looking at the building's address for the seventh time. "It should be here."

Intellectually, she knew that she was not home, that those years carved into the marble-- _1964-1981, 1982-2001_ \--she knew they were real. She wasn't sure _how_ it had happened, but she was not naive; she'd seen and done plenty of strange things in her life, although none quite so strange as this.

Still, she'd held out hope for even one thing that was familiar--when she'd had a bad day, she'd always gone to the L and L, and had always felt better when she'd left it--and not just because the pie was damned good; the company was even better. 

But there was no L and L in this New York--and that meant no Angie Martinelli waiting its tables.

Peggy felt a stab of pain in her heart, closing her eyes to remember the L and L, sitting with Angie in the booth, unwinding after the day and sipping tea or coffee or cola. She could almost hear her friend's voice hailing her as she walked through the doors of the automat. 

_Hey, English! What do you hear?_

"Oh, Angie," she murmured. "It's been such a long day. I wish..."

_What'd you eat today, kiddo? I keep tellin' ya, it ain't good this business of skippin' meals._

Imagining what Angie would say in this situation further helped Peggy calm herself. It wasn't as good as really seeing her, really hearing her voice, but it helped. And even as she thought it, she realized her head was aching dully. She hadn't eaten since breakfast, she'd been so busy and had stayed in the office so late...

A few minutes later, she had timidly slipped into the shop that was where the L and L had once stood. In the back of the building was a refrigerated case containing bottles of soda pop. Carefully opening the sliding glass door, she selected one, enjoying the chill of the cooled air on her hands and the cold feel of the bottle. 

"Is this...plastic?" she asked in mild wonder, tapping the side of the bottle with her fingernail.

Now she was getting a look from the man behind the counter. "We don't carry the glass ones anymore, they don't sell. People are always on the move here, they're not gonna throw a glass bottle of Coke in their backpacks."

Peggy blinked at him, closing the door of the freezer cabinet and bringing her bottle of pop to the counter. "No, I suppose they wouldn't."

The man smirked. "You act like you never saw anything made out of plastic before."

"Oh, I have," Peggy countered brashly, getting the feeling he was taking the piss out of her. "Our airplane cockpits, for instance."

The counterman arched a brow, but said nothing. "That'll be one-fifty."

Peggy forgot herself, eyes widening. "Did you say _one-fifty_? As in _one dollar and fifty cents_?"

"No, as in a hundred and fifty dollars." The counterman frowned. "Of course it's one dollar and fifty cents. Most places charge two, but I like to keep people coming back here, what with the Starbucks across the street and their damn wheatgrass smoothies or whatever."

Peggy stared in mild horror. "I understood maybe every third word of what you just said. But over a dollar for a bottle of soda pop?" She wasn't even going to ask what a Starbucks was--she gathered the counterman didn't mean a character from a Herman Melville novel. 

Placing the soda bottle on the counter, Peggy opened her handbag--and quickly snapped it shut again before the counterman could see the Walther she'd stuffed into the purse. The last thing she needed was to draw more attention to herself. Opening it more carefully to extract her wallet, she came up with fifty cents, which she was realizing was all the money she had in the world right now, since she doubted she was going to be able to pick up her most recent paycheck any time soon. 

_My bloody luck to fall down an elevator shaft and land in Oz two days before payday_ , she thought whimsically. Even still, over a dollar for a bloody fountain drink? She brought in about thirty-five to forty dollars a week, and she knew very well how lucky she was to make that much when Angie was scrambling for tips and making twenty-five a week if she was lucky.

Wherever Peggy now was, would Angie be here? Would she be herself? Would Peggy ever see her again?

Suddenly, she wanted the sugary bite of the soda, price be damned--she would have paid a hundred quid to feel that connection with home once more. Surely she had more money in a zip pocket or something...

A tap on her shoulder made her whirl. A young man, with a small, dime sized earphone in one ear (Peggy thought whimsically of the huge cans she had worn doing comm for the SSR), its wire snaking down to an unseen device in the pocket of his nondescript brown sweatshirt, was holding something out to her. A dollar bill.

"Um...I..."

For some reason, the small kindness made her want to shed a tear. She was so confused, so lost, but for this young man it was just another Wednesday.

"Thank you," she managed to get out, taking the bill. "I--er--I get paid on Friday."

"Been there," the young man said with a chuckle. He didn't actually look like James Barnes--his hair was the whitish color that only peroxide could manufacture on a person, and his eyes were hazel and already beginning to look through her--but there was something about the smile, and the easy calm with which he'd offered his assistance, that made her think of Bucky and feel that little stab at her heart once more. 

Peggy placed her fifty cents atop the dollar bill and handed both to the counterman. "Thank you," she said politely, taking her soda and exiting the store, feeling the counterman's curious gaze on her back before he dismissed her to help the young man purchase what looked like some sort of wrapped snack in a sealed plastic bag. 

Back outside, she found that part of the street had been turned into a little plaza, complete with metal tables and chairs. They appeared to be made of expanded metal, which Peggy reasoned was easy to hose down and clean given their outdoor location. 

_Over there_ , the make-believe Angie in her head told her. _Have a seat and drink yer pop. You could probably use the sugar._

Something caught her eye on one of the tables and she brought her soda towards it, smoothing her skirt beneath her as she sat in the cold, uncomfortable chair.

The newspaper was folded in half, the pages wrinkled; apparently whoever had been seated here earlier had been done reading it and had been too lazy to walk it to a trash bin, but Peggy was glad for her good luck. Twisting off the lid of the plastic soda bottle and taking a long, sweet sip, she began reading. 

The date was the first thing she noticed. _September 12th, 2016._

2016.

Peggy felt her eyes burning, and something bubbled to her lips, a prayer, maybe, or a curse, but all that came out was a sad, bewildered bleat of, 

"Crikey o' _reilly_ ,"

that sounded small and scared even to her own ears.

2016\. 

Seventy years.

_Seventy years._

No wonder the automat was gone. No wonder the Wall of Valor had so many fallen soldiers and agents listed on it. No wonder the Captain was simply a bedtime story to the young agents she had encountered in the lobby of the building. Seventy years. 

_I'm dreaming_ , she thought desperately. _I'm dreaming. I've fallen asleep at my desk. I'm working too hard. Daniel will shake me awake. Rose will bring a cup of coffee. Howard will come, Howard will come and wake me, someone--_

She could feel the hysteria threatening again and so she shook herself out of it, resolutely taking another swallow of soda. The cold bit at her throat and the carbonation bubbled and popped and she forced herself to feel all of it, then opened the newspaper. If she were going to deal with this, she was going to need all the information she could get. She began at the beginning, warning herself that she would have no context for most of what she read.

_**CLAMP'S CAMPAIGN FLOUNDERS, VIOLENCE PREDICTED TO WORSEN** _

_As we move closer to the 2016 presidential election, violence and threats of violence with origins rooted in the Clamp campaign are multiplying exponentially._

_Early on the campaign trail, it seemed that presidential candidate Maximilian Clamp had gained an early lead on the incumbent, President Matthew Ellis. Ellis is running against Clamp for a second term, but as the election draws nearer, Clamp's controversial statements seem to be doing as much harm as good, maybe more. Reports of armed civilians claiming to be Clamp supporters showing up at rallies are coming in, and perpetrators of recent racially motivated hate crimes have cited Clamp's "Clamp Down On Illegal Immigration" platform as a defense for their violent actions._

The photo inset was a side-by-side shot of the two men. The incumbent, President Matthew Ellis, a silver-haired man in a pinstriped suit and a well-coordinated tie, was standing beside a helicopter (Peggy would later learn this was Marine One), in the photo on the left. On the right was a photo of his opponent, Maximilian Clamp. Clamp had been caught at an unfortunate moment of vehemence in whatever speech he had been giving when the photo was taken; his face was contorted into an odd shape, his mouth bent in a twisted o in his darkly-tanned face as he banged a fist down on the podium he stood at. His suit was expensive, but he wore it badly, looking as if the good life had padded him a bit beneath it, and his tie was similarly skew-whiff on his chest with the force of his energetic speech. Atop his screaming head was a painfully indiscreet toupee. Again, most likely expensive, but nobody in his sixties was that blond. With the possible exception of...

Peggy shook that thought away. 

The shot of Clamp, while in color, was blurry newsprint quality, and he was gesturing violently, causing his suit jacket to ride up over his paunchy torso and rendering his lapel pin a small golden blob in the photo. Thus it escaped Peggy's notice for the time being; however, she would get a much closer look at it than she wanted in short order.

She turned the pages until a familiar photo caught her attention, causing her stomach to fall just as it had on the elevator ( _seventy_ ) earlier ( _years_ ) that ( _ago!_ ) evening.

It was another side-by-side shot, taking up much of the page it was on. On the right side was the building she had run out of earlier in the evening. She recognized the glassed-in lobby (obviously still containing the window she had shot out to make her escape) and the landmarks she had passed while fleeing. What she hadn't noticed, probably because she had been too focused on putting distance between herself and her pursuers to look over her shoulder, was the name atop the sleek modern structure.

_Stark._

But even that wasn't nearly as jarring as the photo on the left side of the split. It was the SSR building--nay, the SHIELD building, _her_ building, the one she had relocated the remnants of her splintered agency to to start anew, with help from Howard. The photo had a sepia tone, as opposed to the full color of the newer photo of the newer building, and she wondered how long ago it had been taken.

_The old Stark Industries building (l.) has been given a new "lease" on life (r.) by inventor Tony Stark (inset), son of the late Howard Stark._

Superimposed on the right side of the photo was a strikingly familiar looking man, sharply dressed in a business suit, arms folded over...something...gleaming on (in?) his chest, sunglasses tipped rakishly down over his twinkling eyes. 

_**STILL THE TOAST FROM COAST TO COAST** _

_Tony Stark doesn't do anything halfway--his miraculous advances in the scientific field alone prove that, to say nothing of his heroic exploits as the city's metallic super-suited Iron Man--so let's just say that when he turns over a new leaf, expect a whole new forest._

_While the company has had a past presence in the Big Apple, the renovation of this structure marks the definitive decision to make Stark Industries bicoastal. Moreover, according to Stark, the tower runs entirely on clean energy--and over the next two years, he plans to allow lower-income families and start-ups to apply for connection to the power source._

_Stark credits acting CEO of Stark Industries, Virginia "Pepper" Potts, with this idea. "I loved it the minute I heard it," he says of Potts' suggestion. "That's Pep for you though--always forward thinking." He says this with undisguised affection; the two have been dating for quite some time, and are no stranger to Page Six in this very newspaper. However, then he stills, and this reporter can see the faraway look in his eyes as he continues, "My father was a great man, and it's thanks in part to him that this country is still the land of the free. But it's time to take Stark Industries out of the dark ages of war and into the golden age of global good. I'd like to think this will be a good start."_

_When asked exactly what parts of the company might make use of the office and laboratory space separate from Stark and Potts' lavish, spacious living quarters, Stark simply winks and says, "We've got a couple of tenants in mind."_

Peggy ran her fingertips over the color-printed photo of the entrepreneur's face. She could instantly see the resemblance to Howard.

The _late_ Howard Stark, the article had said. My father _was_ a great man.

Peggy closed her eyes, a single tear zigzagging down her cheek. 

No Angie, and now, no Howard. 

Blinking the tears away, she turned the page again--and got the biggest shock of all.

_**"NOT A PERFECT SOLDIER, BUT A GOOD PERSON"** _

_The Star Spangled Avenger got a warm welcome from his fans Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2016, as they gathered in Prospect Park to mark the debut of a  
13-foot bronze statue of the superhero Captain America in the Children's Corner of the park, right in front of the carousel._

_Those who came to the unveiling, many decked out in Captain America related costumes and apparel, say it is a fitting location because he represents the city’s spirit whether fighting Nazis or evil aliens._

_Despite a heavy shower, fans kept lining up to get a picture with the statue and celebrate the hero’s contributions to the country and the city. To them, Brooklynites especially, the statue--indeed, the Captain himself--represent hope for the future, that anyone can transcend humble beginnings; anyone can do incredible things if they so choose._

_"The Captain means a lot to us. He inspires me every day," one fan dressed in 1940s-accurate garments told a reporter, "to be not a perfect soldier, but a good person."_

Peggy gave up trying to hold back the tears, but they were no longer tears of sorrow. There was a photo of the statue--of the Captain, raising his shield heroically just as she remembered. Even after all this time...they remembered. 

"I've got to see it," she murmured. "Oh, I've just got to see it..."

**

Pepper had put on one of Tony's shirts, trying to quell her worry about him soaring off into potential danger by watching him faff about the room looking for his clothes and muttering to himself, something that always amused her. 

"JARVIS," she said, her instinct to be helpful and efficient kicking in, "why don't you pull up those visuals while Tony finds his socks?" She said this last with a wry smile for her lover, who wrinkled his nose at her in amusement. "I don't know how I can help, but it can't hurt to show me."

" _ **Very good, Miss Potts,**_ " JARVIS agreed, and then Pepper was looking at video footage of a woman in a blue business suit positively whaling on two younger agents Pepper knew to say hello to in the halls--and even that only because they were scientists and she dealt with them personally whenever they applied to use Stark tech in their projects. 

"Wait!" she cried as the woman on the holoscreen wheeled, clearly intending to run for the door. "Freeze that! Enlarge, max res! Now!"

As JARVIS obeyed, Tony chuckled. "Careful, Pep. You're starting to sound like--"

But Pepper was already off the bed, tugging Tony's borrowed shirt down over her nudity. "I've got to check something," she said. "Go, Tony. Go--I'll call you."

"Pepper--" 

But before Tony finished the sentence, his own gaze caught on the image frozen on the holoscreen, crystal clear now that its motion had been halted. A strikingly beautiful face, jaw set in determination, eyes steely with the focus on escape.

"It can't be," he murmured hoarsely, staring at the face that he'd seen in sepia-toned memories and heard about a thousand times in fairy tales and bedtime stories. "It can't be."

**

The article had said the statue was in Prospect Park. Leaving the newspaper behind, Peggy considered hailing a cab, but remembered as she tossed her empty soda bottle in a trash bin that she had no money.

What she did have, thankfully, was a subway token. However...

"There's no slot here," she muttered ten minutes later, in the subway station. At least, there wasn't one for a token. There was some sort of protruding slot with a digital readout (the omnipresence of technology that had only existed in the pages of Howard's project notebooks--or so she had thought--was still dazzling to her) but no coin slot. On either side of where she was blocking foot traffic, people who _did_ know what they were doing were moving through the turnstiles. Watching them, Peggy saw they were sliding cards through the raised slots, and the digital monitors were beeping, then allowing access through the turnstiles. 

Nerves sizzling with impatience--she had no idea if she were being pursued, and the need to see the statue honoring her fallen Captain had become all-encompassing almost immediately--Peggy marched up to the glassed-in transit booth. Sliding her token into the dish between her side of the window and the transit worker's, she said, "How do I use this?"

The transit worker took the token, then gave her the same look that the counterman had when he'd told her the price of soda pop. "Where did you get this, lady? A time capsule?"

Peggy wanted to scream. "Is it valid for a subway ride or isn't it?" she demanded. "I am in a hurry."

The transit worker glanced behind Peggy to where a line of commuters was forming, all needing help in some way or another, and elected not to argue with her. "I really shouldn't honor this thing, but here. This'll get you one ride."

He shoved a little white card into the dish. Peggy took it and turned it over in her hands; it was thin card stock, with a black strip at the bottom of it. _MetroCard, Single Ride_ was printed on it in green ink, and beneath the black strip in smaller letters, _Insert this way/This side facing you._

"Thank you," Peggy said, and sidestepped to let the people in line at the window. 

It only took a few more seconds of observing the people around her to figure out how the little card worked. Sliding it through the slot with the strip facing her as the instructions stated, Peggy heard a beep and a clank that let her know the turnstile would allow her through, and when she pushed it it offered no resistance. 

Trying to calm herself, she waited along with everyone else for a train. The one that arrived did not have the boxy look she was used to, but it was comfortably filthy, although she was not familiar with the letter distinction of its route--Q. Still, she didn't have time to hang around here. Luckily, it didn't take too many minutes of studying the subway map to realize which stop she would need to get off at.

Peggy had acquainted herself well with Brooklyn in the years following the war, visiting all the places she had ever heard Steve speak about, sometimes imagining that he was showing her his favorite spots as he'd sometimes bashfully hinted he wanted to do. 

She sank down onto an uncomfortable plastic seat on the train, leaning her head back against the wall of the car and closing her eyes. She listened to the train's conductor announce the stops and let Steve's voice in her memory lull her into a much-needed state of calm. _When we're home from the war, I'll show you my favorite place to...we rode the Cyclone and I...someday I'd love to take you to...Bucky and I used to go...Peggy, have you ever been to..._

" _Prospect Park._ "

Peggy's eyes snapped open. The doors opened as the conductor continued speaking.

" _Prospect Park. Transfer here for B and shuttle service. Stand clear of the closing doors._ "

Almost without realizing she'd done so, Peggy jumped out of her seat and dashed out the doors before they could shut. As she stood on the crowded platform and watched the train depart, she remembered the words printed on the little card she'd used to gain access to the subway-- _single ride_ \--and realized she was effectively trapped here now, as she'd spent her last fifty cents on the soda she had finished drinking in the plaza in midtown.

Climbing the stairs to street level, Peggy saw the park gates across the street and headed for them. She had no idea where she as or where to go, but the article had mentioned a carousel. She figured it would be easy to spot, and it wasn't like she had anything else to do tonight. Along with being out of money, she was also out of ideas and adrenaline. She could not afford a cab ride to Manhattan--she couldn't even afford another train card--and there was likely no home to go back to. There was no place for her to go that wasn't back to the 

(SSR? SHIELD? Where had she come from tonight?)

building she'd fled in alarm not two hours ago, and she was all alone. There was no one to call for help. 

She was never sure ever after how long she wandered aimlessly, letting her tired feet take her wherever they would. Night had fallen, and the carousel was silent, which might have been why it took her a little longer to locate it. The gaily painted horses were stopped mid-canter, and Peggy imagined she could hear the ghost of calliope music as she circled the quiet machine.

And there--there, at the juncture where the path forked around either side of a grassy meadow--there he was. 

The statue was made of bronze, and was easily twelve foot tall or better; the man himself, in full uniform, holding that mighty shield aloft. He was standing atop a rock which in turn was atop a square base, carved with an image of that first flimsy shield, the one she'd seen him holding on a brightly lit stage a lifetime ago to hawk war bonds...

Her voice sounded small and bewildered to her own ears as she said softly, without meaning to,

"Steve?"

**

Pepper, normally so put together, normally ten steps ahead, found herself pelting to the elevators in her bare feet, the hem of Tony's borrowed t-shirt fluttering about her thighs as she ran. A written note kept flashing in her memory--Steve, found this with my dad's things, thought you might like to have it, Tony--and she punched the button that cheekily (and stupidly, she felt, from a security standpoint) was emblazoned with a very familiar shield.

Ordinarily, Pepper did not abuse the power she held, but she considered this an emergency of sorts. She had the override codes for all of the living quarters in Stark Tower in case of such an emergency.

" _ **May I be of assistance, Ms. Potts?**_ " JARVIS's computerized voice spoke pleasantly from the speaker set into the wall beside the doorjamb. " _ **Captain Rogers is not in. He and Agent Romanoff are deployed on a mission and are not set to return for over a month, as you pointed out to Mr. Stark**_."

Pepper had already overridden Steve's access code; the door slid back with a soft hum. "Everything is fine, JARVIS," Pepper said. "Tony left a note here for the Captain and I wanted a look at it, that's all."

The note and photo were still lying on the floor of the entryway. Pepper picked it up, unclipping the note to get a better look at the sepia photograph of the woman seated on the edge of the desk. "JARVIS, please pull up security footage," Pepper said. "Specifically, the elevator bank on the first floor, and the Wall of Valor." She didn't really need to see the footage again, but a second look confirmed her suspicions beyond all shadow of doubt.

The woman on the screen did not just bear a startling resemblance to the woman in the photo. They were one and the same. 

"JARVIS," she said softly, "please put in a call to Tony for me."

**

It was the blood, Clint would explain later, that had given his target away. 

As soon as the mysterious woman had knocked into him on the street, Clint had noticed that she was bleeding. After speaking with Phil Coulson, this was the trail of breadcrumbs he followed from his origin point to a convenience store in midtown.

Clint had bled through enough battles to know that the elongated, teardrop-shaped blood spattered on the sidewalk leading away in the direction the woman had gone after scooping up her purse meant that she had been running. Eventually, the blood drops became rounder, closer together, and he knew she had slowed to a walk. There had been a larger bloodstain in front of the convenience store that told Clint she had stopped and hesitated there for some time before deciding to go in (proven by the blood droplets in front of the freezer case containing the soda). 

The blood drops became smaller as he followed this trail; he imagined the wounds were not serious and thus scabbing over, but his target had bled long enough to lead him to his next breadcrumb--a newspaper. Again, he knew which chair she had sat in by the collection of spatter beneath it and the wrought-iron table. 

He didn't need any more blood to show him the way after that--she had left him a map.

The newspaper had been left open to an article detailing the dedication of the Captain America statue in Prospect Park. Clint remembered that day well; he had attended the ceremony--not as a guest, but as a bodyguard. Natasha had been in the crowd in civilian clothes, red hair tied back in a ponytail and wearing a Captain America shirt and jeans--she had looked about sixteen and not at all threatening--while he had been at more of a distance, backing her up. 

But no one had tried to hurt Steve. In fact, there had been nothing but love and support for him as he had spoken, simply but passionately, about how he was no one special, just an American citizen trying to do what he felt was right, as he had been doing ever since he had first enlisted in the Army back in the 1940s. How they all, every American, had a responsibility to do what was right, and every single one of them had the power to do so. Clint remembered how he had smiled to himself, thinking how they all, in their own ways, looked up to Steve--he himself was fond of saying that you could end up finding yourself fighting evil magicians simply because Steve Rogers told you it had to be done--and it was because of the sturdy heart evident in that gentle but genuine speech which had prompted the crowd to burst into proud applause at its conclusion. 

Standing over the table his target had vacated, Clint read the headline of the article:

_**NOT A PERFECT SOLDIER, BUT A GOOD PERSON** _

Tapping his earpiece, he said, "Coulson, come back."

" _Barton. Got anything?_ "

"I'm following up on a lead. Prospect Park. If you have any other units out besides me, you might want to send them there."

" _Based on what?_ "

"On a hunch," Clint said, "Out."

**

She had no idea how long she'd been standing there, just looking at him.

The sculptor had done their job well, had captured the utter confidence in his stance, the strength that he had come to own through that bitter and bloody war, the stubborn set of his jaw that belied the determination of the small, slender recruit that had become the Captain. The arm that held the shield seemed immovable, and had she ever missed him more than she did at this moment? She had a terrible urge to touch the thing, to reach out and place a hand on the bronze arm, touch the star carved onto his chest. 

The statue blurred in her vision with sudden tears, and Peggy dropped her dizzy head, running her hands over the raised letters carved onto the base. Just a kid from Brooklyn. 

"Pull yourself together," she hissed to herself. "You will not faint. You will _not faint_."

"Cool, huh?" 

Peggy whirled.

There was a man standing in front of her. He was wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt with a design that looked like a target printed on it--was that supposed to mean something? It was purple, for goodness' sake--and his fair hair was in casual, trendy disarray. He blew a bubble-gum bubble as Peggy watched, swiveling his head languidly to look up at the statue, then back down at her. The bubble popped.

"The statue," the man clarified as he took in her startled expression. "Pretty neat, right?"

"It looks...It looks new," she said quietly.

"Yeah, they brought it from California a few months ago. Did a big dedication ceremony right here in the park. It was nice. People dressed up in costumes and there were a lot of really cool speeches. It was on the news. His speech was great."

Peggy blinked. "I'm sorry?"

The man indicated the statue. "Cap, I mean."

"Cap," Peggy repeated slowly, stumbling over the familiar term, as if it were an alien language to her after all this time. 

She glanced back up at the statue. Surely, this man was talking about someone else. Captain America--her Captain America--had been lost to ice and time years ago. However, it wasn't out of the question that they might have tried again...

But oh, that face, carved in bronze, the chiseled cheek, the strong jaw beneath that helmet. It was _his_ face. 

The man was speaking again.

"Yeah, Cap gave a speech. Said a lot of really great stuff about how he never really felt like he was a hero or a big deal, he was just a kid who grew up in Brooklyn and he always just does what he thinks is the right thing to do. The end was the best. He said that we as a society have to do better and that he still believes in America and the future and a bunch of other things. It was on the news," the man repeated, then laughed. "Cap was blushing a little bit at all the attention. He's so funny about stuff like that. Put him in front of a group of soldiers and he can bring the roof down with a rousing call to arms, but get him up on a stage and he turns into the lead understudy in the high-school play. His ears get all pink and he does everything but shuffle his feet."

Peggy could have corrected these assumptions by asserting that the Captain had learned some degree of comfort, not just onstage but on film, during his colorful career, but there was something far more important to focus on. "Let me test my understanding here," Peggy said, head feeling swimmy with the implications of what she was hearing. "You are telling me that one month ago, Captain America stood in this very park and gave a speech."

The man grinned. "Yeah. He lives in Brooklyn. He's got a place in Manhattan too, but he likes to stay in Brooklyn. They wanted him to go to DC but he wouldn't, said he was a hometown boy. We're pretty proud of him."

"Where am I?" Peggy asked softly, looking up at the statue.

"Oh, jeez, you need a subway map? Where are you trying to get to?" He was instantly helpful, like the young man in the shop where she had bought the soda had been, but Peggy shook her head, both to clear it and to change the subject. 

"The library," she said. "You said that the news covered the event you are telling me about. That means there must have been a newsreel or an article in the paper. Where would I be able to view those?"

"Yeah, but, I mean, you don't have to go all the way to the library," the man said. "I mean, yeah, their internet is free but Starbucks has Wi-Fi."

"What has a what?" Peggy asked. Bloody nora, what was this "Starbuck" everyone was referring to?

"You sure you're OK? You look a little pale." The man took something out of his pocket. She had seen similar devices in the shop windows earlier. "Here, I'll show you. Take a look."

Peggy watched in fascinated terror as the man pressed a button on the small, flat device. It lit up, and Peggy realized she was looking at some sort of screen. Like lightning, the man's fingers tapped right onto the small glass face of the device, and then words were scrolling on it, too fast for Peggy's eyes to follow as he swiped her finger down, down, down, tap, tap, tap.

"Got it. Here. I'll put the volume up." He tilted the device so Peggy could see it, pushing a button on its side. A little picture of what looked like a bullhorn appeared on the screen, and as she looked, a small bar graph beneath the bullhorn lit up, one bar at a time from smallest to largest.

And then there was something happening on the screen, just like a newsreel, only in bright color in the palm of the man's hand. 

Peggy swallowed as she watched the boy from Brooklyn shyly take his place in front of the microphone. He was in uniform--but it was a uniform she had never seen before, something sleek and modern, brilliant blue, vivid red stripes breaking up the almost blinding white. The silver star flashed on his chest. Flashes went off like heat lightning--cameras. 

_Darling_ , she thought helplessly. _Oh, my darling._

But it was _him_. His hair was shorter--gone was the forelock she'd dreamed a thousand times of brushing out of his eyes, what was left sticking up adorably like the down on a chick, although it was unlike Steve to look anything but neat, and she could see he'd tried to tame it with something. The scent of Brylcreem in her memory, over his aftershave and the clean scent of carbolic soap, threatened to overwhelm her. His eyes were still as blue, his jaw still strong and stubborn, and _you will **not** faint_ , she told herself for what felt like the thousandth time.

" _We have to do better_ ," he said, his voice coming out of the tiny device and oh it was his voice, the voice she thought she'd never hear again this side of heaven. " _I believe this country--this world--is worth fighting for, but it has to start here. Now. With every last one of us. We have...to do...better,_ " he said, and there was thunderous applause, sounding like the fire of a machine-gun nest back in the war. 

"Hey." The man's voice was soft, kind. "Hey, don't. It's OK."

Looking up, Peggy saw the man double and treble in her vision and realized she was crying, silly, girlish, foolish tears. Taking a shuddering breath, she blinked them away, brushing at her cheek. "I...I'm sorry."

"Hey, I get it," the man said in a friendly tone. "He's really something, isn't he?"

Peggy looked up at the statue once more. "Yes. Yes, he is."

**

The more time that passed, the more Clint thought Coulson had been right to panic. Sure, she was pretty. Sure, she was crying, and OK, that bothered him a little, but he'd been fooled before by crying women--a cagey redhead with a lockbox and a secret sprung to mind and he quickly banished that thought, that damage had been done--but there was a handbag hooked over this woman's arm that could easily be concealing a weapon. However, she wasn't going for it, or making anything even close to a threatening move. She was just asking him questions.

Questions about Steve.

Clint knew he had to tread carefully. So far, nothing he had told her about Steve was private--everything he'd mentioned was common knowledge, and the video of the statue dedication that he'd showed her was easily accessible on the internet. Clint had also had season tickets to a seemingly endless string of instances in which people had tried to assassinate Steve, and none of them had tried anything but a frontal assault--they hadn't wasted time asking rather obvious questions.

Still, something didn't feel right. He had instinctively played dumb, babbled, trying to get her to give something away, but she was being cagey. Every time he took a step towards her, she circled back out of his reach. She knew how to fight, and that alone was suspicious in itself.

"You said...you said the Captain lives in Brooklyn?" she asked.

See, that--that there was a suspicious question. Everyone knew Steve lived in Brooklyn, but Clint sure as hell wasn't going to draw a map to his apartment.

"Do you..." She visibly composed herself. "Have you met the Captain?"

Clint smiled. "Are you kidding? I had a front row seat to the second coming of Cap. Listen," he said quickly, taking a chance, "you seem a little upset. It's going to be okay, I promise. Why don't we go get a coffee somewhere and we can talk? My name's--"

He never finished the sentence; before he could tell her his name, she stiffened with a gasp, back arching slightly and head jerking back in surprise. She made a soft sound of alarm, and then as Clint watched, the doe-brown eyes rolled back in her head and she pitched forward. He sprang forward just in time to catch her, and as they yawed to the side and she slumped over in his arms, he saw it--a dart sticking out of her back, just beneath her shoulder blade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess I don't have much to say tonight. I love New York. I love these characters.
> 
> EDIT: I meant to add, I was at the Captain America statue dedication in 2016 dressed as Peggy. I cried seeing him there. The person interviewed to say "not a perfect soldier, but a good person" was me, for a small Brooklyn publication. It remains one of my happiest days in recent memory.


	8. I Think Of You, And Let It Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Subtitle: Agent Down 
> 
> or 
> 
> How I Spent my Russian Vacation

_99 Jahre Krieg_   
_Ließen keinen Platz für Sieger_   
_Kriegsminister gibt's nicht mehr_   
_Und auch keine Düsenflieger_   
_Heute zieh' ich meine Runden_   
_Seh' die Welt in Trümmern liegen_   
_Hab 'n Luftballon gefunden_   
_Denk' an dich und lass' ihn fliegen_

_Ninety-nine dreams I have had,_   
_In every one a red balloon._   
_It's all over and I'm standing pretty_   
_In this dust that was a city_   
_If I could find a souvenir_   
_Just to prove the world was here_   
_And here is a red balloon_   
_I think of you, and let it go_

**(Nena, _99 Luftballons/99 Red Balloons_ )**

**

In another setting, it would have looked romantic—a man falling to his knees with a stricken woman cradled in his arms.

Until Hawkeye spoiled the lovely image with the truth, with his characteristic Bed-Stuy eloquence.

"--the  _fuck_?!" Clint sputtered, dropping to kneel before the statue with the woman in his arms.  

The answer hit its thrusters and dropped into a hover a short distance above him, and then Iron Man dropped to the concrete in one of his classic superhero landings.  

Tony's faceplate came up, and his eyes were dark and dilated with shock and unease. For one surprised moment, Clint didn’t even recognize the other man--simply because he so rarely saw Tony look afraid. 

Clint got his knees more comfortably under him, carefully cradling the unconscious woman in his lap.  Whatever she’d been hit with, it was strong--the woman who’d been so on guard that she’d pivoted to keep him in front of her during their entire conversation, refusing to give him her back, was now dead weight in his arms. Despite that, Clint could feel a strong, conditioned body beneath the wool of her bloodied suit. He felt for a pulse, relieved to find it there before she took a slow, drugged breath. 

"What the hell did you do  _that_  for?" he asked in exasperation, looking up at Tony as the Iron Man stood, shut off his repulsors and walked closer.  "She wasn't going anywhere.  I had her."

"Let me see her." Tony’s usual rapid-fire delivery was even more clipped than usual, and he had one arm at the ready, repulsor blinking on standby, just in case. 

Clint didn't move to hand her over, rather turning his body slightly as if that would shield her from whatever Tony had planned.  "You shot her in the  _back_.  You didn't have to do that! I had the drop on her.  You didn't give her a chance."

"Cool your jets," Tony retorted, kneeling across from him, but dousing the repulsor as an unspoken sign of good faith that wasn’t lost on Clint.  "She shot her way out of the Tower tonight and beat the hell out of two of our fobbits.  She's not exactly harmless.  Besides, it's just a sedative.  It isn't going to hurt her.  Now  _let.  Me. **See**._ "

Clint moved the tangled brunette curls off the unconscious woman’s face.  She looked somehow younger, features relaxed in unconsciousness, red lips parted, lashes starred damply together, the tears still wet on her cheek.  Gently, Clint dried them with the cuff of his hooded jacket. 

Tony muttered an oath.  "J.A.R.V.I.S.  Pull up that security still again.  Side by side, newsreel."

The instructions didn't make too much sense to Clint, but sensing the question, Tony added one more command, "Project."

The everyday magic of Stark Industries' patented holoscreens came up between the two Avengers, and Clint saw not only the security footage of the evening's earlier brawl--two downed agents with the mystery woman standing over them, gun muzzle bright with a flash as she attacked not them but the plate-glass walls--but a picture he'd seen once already, weeks ago.  His memory supplied an image of its own--himself, Pepper, Tony, Bruce and Natasha, all gathered around a similar holoscreen, looking at the image projected before him now, a faded, sepia-toned newsprinted photograph, affixed to the lid of Steve's lost compass.  All of the pictures were of the same lovely face--the face now stilled by sedatives, the face of the woman lying in his arms.

But _how_?

" _Dude_. You blackjacked Cap’s girl," he quipped quietly,   "Holy shit, Tony, is Steve ever gonna be mad."

"It's not possible," Tony said, not laughing at the joke, his eyes still fixed on the unconscious woman.  "It's--it just isn't."

"What is going on?” Clint asked, with a return to severity. “Tony, who is this woman? Who is she _really_?”

There was a mixture of rare emotion on Tony’s face as he looked down at the woman in Clint’s arms--worry, pity, and beyond all that…

…wonder.

“Her name is Peggy Carter.”

**

The grey damp of early spring could chill you to the bone if you weren’t careful. Between the Danube Delta and the Bulgarian Black Sea wasn’t that far in modern terms, and it only had a handful of supposedly former strongholds for H.Y.D.R.A--nine all tolled back in 1940. Of those nine, only four still stood in any sense of the word, and from that four, two were what could be called “Historically Preservable”. Heritage and culture preservation was the false banner they were marching under here. The first of many, Steve reflected ruefully. He hated lying. He simply wasn’t good at it.

He had once lamented to Peggy about his lack of skill at deception. It had been a terribly important conversation, and he remembered his heart pounding with the need for her to believe him, that if there was ever a time his honesty could have saved him, he hoped it was this one.

_“Nothing happened,” he’d told her._

_She arched those sculpted brows. “If that is nothing, Captain”—and oh an arctic wind howled through the letters of the word “Captain” as they left her lips, as if it were a curse, dooming him to be captain of nothing but ice and snow and lonely emptiness—“then I am sure Private Lorraine will be most interested to learn what you consider something.”_

_“Private Lorraine isn’t going to be learning anything from me,” Steve countered, but she was ready for him:_

_“Looks like she was the one doing the teaching.”_

_I didn’t ask her to,” Steve said. “To be honest, she caught me off-guard. I didn’t know how to react.”_

_Peggy’s brows lowered; she believed that, he thought._

_“Things like that just do **not** happen to me,” he added. “Would you know what to do if you were thrown into an unfamiliar situation like that?”_

_Peggy smirked. “I wouldn’t **freeze**.”_

_“No, you’d probably just shoot it,” Steve groused._

_Peggy seemed to bristle. “Are you saying I’m trigger happy, Captain Rogers?”_

_She wasn’t going to like anything he said; she was in the mood to fight. He could tell. And it was his fault. “I’m saying you’re quicker on your feet than I am, and better at dealing with…social stuff.”_

_“If I did not want to be kissed, I would not be,” Peggy said smoothly._

_“You’d probably just **shoot** him,” Steve repeated, more emphatically._

_Peggy’s brows went back up. “Is one kiss worth a bullet?”_

_“You seem to think so.” Steve showed her the shield, complete with the ding from the round she’d fired._

_Peggy sighed through her nose. “Captain Rogers, what you do on your personal time is none of my business. Who you kiss is none of my business. But on the SSR’s time, I expect you to be professional.”_

_“I don’t know what I find more insulting,” Steve said flatly. “That you think I’m unprofessional or that you think I’d rather have kissed Lorraine than—“_

_He stopped himself just in time not to speak it aloud, but not in time for her not to make the connection. Now her eyebrows were almost in her hair. “Than…?”_

_**I want you, I want you, I want you, I want to kiss you, come here,** was what he wanted to say, but instead he concluded, “An unprofessional conversation that we shouldn’t have on the SSR’s time.”_

_There was a flash of pure frustration in Peggy’s dark brown eyes when she realized she was hoist with her own petard. “I do not like having my words fed back to me, Captain Rogers.”_

_“Then stop being right all the time, but I’ll keep it in mind."_

_The eyes sparkled. He’d succeeded in amusing her, and that was at least progress. “Very well, Captain. I shall file it away for when we are off the clock. As for being right all the time, I can sadly do nothing about it.”_

_He allowed himself to smile, even if she didn’t. Daring to step closer, he risked one last bit of truth. “Agent. You **are** quicker on your feet than I am, and far better at knowing people. Whether you witnessed it or not—and you did, and I am sorry because of it—I didn’t want anything like that from Lorraine. But having you see it and think worse of me, on either a business or…personal level, bothers me. You can see that, can’t you?”_

_Peggy regarded him carefully—and he loved that about her, how she always gave true consideration to her words—and finally nodded. “I can. You are many things, Captain, but not a liar.”_

_“Not a good one, anyway,” Steve sighed._

_Peggy glided closer with the click of a high heel. “That is not a bad thing, Steve,” she said, using his first name for the first time in the conversation. “It is not a bad thing to be honest and sincere.”_

_“The more successful are good at lying,” Steve argued mildly._

_“I do not agree with your definition of success,” Peggy said, just as mildly. “It is sometimes…tiring not to be able to trust what someone says, or does. It might be refreshing to know they were sincere.”_

_Steve felt his heart rate pick up. “I’ll…file that away for when we’re off the clock.”_

_She smirked. “What did I tell you about feeding my words back to me?”_

_“Would you prefer bread and cheese?”_

_She smiled, finally, a real smile, and when she spoke he joined her in saying it: “An unprofessional conversation that we shouldn’t have on the SSR’s time.”_

_But it was Peggy who had the last word, and if his heart had wings…_

_“I shall look forward to it.”_

They had never had that unprofessional conversation--another regret to lay with the dried bouquet of regrets he had regarding Peggy--but he had never become a better liar, and the cold comfort he pulled around himself like the old, broken-in leather jacket he’d worn back in the field was that Peggy had valued his honesty, had praised him for it, admired him for it. If he were being honest with himself, as much as he loathed being stuck back at base, these sorts of missions weren’t what he enjoyed either. He wasn’t a spy. It wasn’t just that he was garbage at lying—as Natasha never tired of reminding him, his Russian was worse than Tony’s French, which was saying something. Tony’s French sounded like an exchange student from the Republic of French Stereotypique trying to impress a date. 

At least it made sense why Steve was here, although it did not sit well with him. He was surrounded by ghosts no matter where he stepped.

When the call had come down that morning looking for a mason to go check the lower foundations on the eastern side (which would require rappelling off the sheer cliff face) he had volunteered with a hearty _Jawohl_. Until then, he hadn’t had an excuse to get that close to the places they needed someone positioned to slip whatever the tech in his tool belt was.

Tony had been right--he had not truly been listening to the explanation of how the device he was carrying in his belt worked; he’d been too tangled up in his own thoughts. Honestly, once the explanation had passed “where to place it”, “how to switch it on”, and “how to make sure it doesn’t explode, he had checked out. Even now, the twenty-five minute lecture Tony had given on the intricacies of the tech wasn’t going to be as useful as the coils of strong line he carried on his shoulder. He reminded himself he didn’t need to know more than “will it work?” and “Can it blow up?” and double-checked his harness before setting off down around the back of what the locals called “The Hyena’s Path”. 

Under normal circumstances, asking if something could detonate on a supposedly covert mission wouldn’t be necessary. Sure, his Russian was abysmal, his ability to lie trash, but Steve Rogers wasn’t an idiot. Not in the 1940s, and not now. But he’d worked with a Stark before, and he knew for a fact that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. At least pretending to be a German-born mason with a degree in medieval architecture hadn’t been nearly as hard as he had originally feared. His German, Bulgarian and Croat were still perfect (so long as he only had to _speak_ the latter two and not write them). And the years of poring over every art style he could read about in New York’s public libraries had finally come in handy. 

A shiver rippled through him as salt spray flicked up to mist his face; he felt a moment’s gratitude for the beard he’d grown out to hide his face better. He wasn’t crazy about it, but it was easier than the digimesh masks Nat had tried to talk him into. 

A gentle drizzle was starting to fall when he finally reached the edge, and he shivered again, but not from cold; the old ghosts were whipping around him like the winter wind. There had been another night, much colder than this one, but unholy levels of wet. The sea had been a boiling riot, making it nearly impossible to hear anything but its competition with the rolling thunder above…

_“Anyone feeling like we stumbled on Dracula’s castle here?” Dum-Dum chuckled before the thunder drowned him out._

_Morita rolled his eyes. “That’s five hundred twenty klicks in the **other** direction.”_

_“How can you possibly know that?”_

_Morita pointed to the only light source still burning that wasn't from the castle above, across the water to the northeast. It appeared a bare pinprick against the darkness to Dugan and most of the others, but the soldier to Steve’s left nodded. “Odessa...”_

_They had been through Odessa just after the massacre, and the mention of that once-sparkling jewel on the Black Sea, the jewel that had been all but obliterated, put an end to the jokes and jibes. Steve was briefly grateful not to have to order them to secure that shit. Besides, if things went right tonight, perhaps the citizens they’d failed to save might finally rest in peace._

_They all knew it was more than rumors. There was truly a monster in the castle ahead of them, but it wasn’t Dracula. The stories of an officer sanctioned by H.Y.D.R.A. to commit some of the most gut-churning “crafts” for her own pleasure among those at Buchenwald had been worse than any ghost story, any campfire tale. No one slept well thinking about books and lampshades made from human skin decorating the living room, or tattoos with ink made from components too vile to speak of etched into innocent skin to see how long it would take for infection to set in, tattoos sliced from the living to be displayed in a museum of the macabre for the pleasure of the monsters._

_Moreso than any vampire’s lair, the castle was a chamber of horrors, hot and close with the stench of death, tanning liquids, and necrotizing bits of flesh that the monsters hadn’t thought worth saving. Without saying so, to a man, the Commandos had to think of it in almost medical terms--to do otherwise would have compromised them, and irrationality would have invited insanity, or worse, a chink in the armor that could have convinced them to let the demon go when they finally captured her in the grand study._

_The woman, for the monster was indeed female, put on a hell of a show. She’d cried, pleaded with them, swore that her husband was keeping her prisoner here in this demon’s labyrinth decorated in human flesh while he was back at Buchenwald._

_No one was convinced, but only Bucky, with his usual Brooklyn backstreet eloquence, was brave enough to put it into words, dragging on a cigarette and exhaling the smoke from his nostrils in the way that made him look lazy and dangerous._

_“She stinks of death, and there’s blood under the lacquer on her nails. It’s not Commander Koch we were sent to get…it was his dame.”_

Steve shook the memories away. They had gotten in that night the same way he was going to get in now--rappelling down the solid cliff face to enter through an old drain system. Not glamorous, but with any luck there would be less human remains ahead of him. If he could make it that far. He found a safe anchor to tie off, threw off the line, and clipped in.

It actually felt freeing for a moment as he clamped down, the sudden rush of sea and spray and air almost pleasant as he sent a shower of rocks rattling down as he began a controlled descent. It helped to chase away the olfactory hallucination of rot and death as he played his role and checked the ease of fallout from the foundation, using a hammer and pins to scale sideways across the cliff face. He frowned slightly; due to the neglect, it might as well have been made of Swiss cheese. 

Not that that came as a surprise. Not even the High Command had wanted a thing to do with this fortress after the Koches had left their stain on it. The villagers five miles off had let it go to rack and ruin. Twice, it had been attempted to torch the fortress entirely--once by the villagers, and once by H.Y.D.R.A. themselves. When someone was so vile that both the Allies and the Axis wanted all trace of their existence wiped from the face of the earth and the annals of history salted behind them, it was saying something. The problem was this stronghold had simply been too strategically placed. Koch had been cheating on the S.S. with H.Y.D.R.A., and he had known too much not to use it to garner not just wealth, but secrets, technology and loyalty.

Placing another pin, then hammering it to anchor his line, Steve tested it twice before finally swinging his weight onto it, but he knew it was a mistake as soon as he pushed off, the way a baseball pitcher knows he has thrown wide as soon as the ball leaves his hand. The limestone was weak, soft, and it gave way. The line of reserves kept him from falling the six hundred feet into the swirling grey cold below to be dashed against the rocks, his story ending as a bloody smear studded with bits of bone, but that didn’t stop the adrenaline from flushing into his bloodstream. He grabbed the sheer cliff face and broke two of his fingernails back to the quick, the pain glassy and immediate as he climbed, forgoing any more pins, not stopping until he got to a small lip of rock face that he tested several times before giving it his weight. 

He had swung out and back nearly forty feet, his shoulder slamming hard enough into the rock wall to cut a deep scratch down his arm. It would be healed by morning, which meant long sleeves for the rest of the week and pretending to be more injured than he was. “Damn,” he grunted, looking at the crimson streak twenty feet above him.

Worse, it meant that this side of the wall would soon be swarming with people trying to shore up the structure for whatever this place would become when its true owners moved in. And that, in turn, meant that they didn’t have much time--he and Natasha would have to come back tonight. It looked like Gustav and Taznya were punching out. Cap and the Widow were going on the clock.

**

Hawkeye and Iron Man were having problems of their own. They’d decided that the woman—Agent Carter—must be brought back to the Tower for her own safety, preferably before the sedative wore off to ensure she wouldn’t try to attack them and run again. But Clint wanted to go by the book, whereas Tony decidedly did not.

“Let’s just _wait_ ,” Clint argued. “Let’s call Coulson. Fury will send an air es—“

“ _No,_ ” Tony said, so vehemently that it surprised Clint. “I don’t want Nick to get a hold of her. Not yet.”

Clint knew there was no love lost between Fury and Tony—or Fury and any of the other Avengers, really, Natasha being the exception and that exception being something they never discussed because Natasha got very defensive, which just left Clint with more questions—but he was uneasy about how protective Tony was being towards a hostile stranger who had taken down two lab agents earlier in the evening, as if the real danger was Fury. And S.H.I.E.L.D.

“Are you saying we can’t trust Fury about this?” he asked sternly. “We can’t trust S.H.I.E.L.D.? We don’t even know who this woman really is.”

Tony’s face was working in a strange way, the muscles jumping and twitching as if he were fighting to keep his feelings off it. “She won’t wake up. That dart had enough in it to deck Banner. And I don’t mean Banner Banner, I mean the Other Guy.”

“You better be kidding,” Clint said, eyes wide. “If she dies, Steve will jam his shield into your chest until he cuts you in half.”

“If anything happens to this woman, I’ll let him,” Tony promised, and decisively slipped one armored arm beneath the unconscious woman’s knees and braced her back on the other, lifting her away from Clint in a threshold carry. “If she’s who we think she is, then it’s my fault she’s here. The least I can do is get her some place safe.”

“But that safe place is apparently _not_ with Fury, or S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Clint reiterated. “We still have to call Coulson. They’re already on high alert—I told them I was coming here, remember? That’s why they sent you to follow me. They’re probably right behind me, so let’s just wait for them.”

“You’re right. Damn,” Tony said with a cheerfulness he clearly didn’t feel. “We’re out of time, Hunger Games. We’ve got to get her back to the Tower before Coulson and Nick get here and detain her.” 

In their line of work, _detain_ was a nice word for _kidnap_ , and Clint knew Fury was capable of it—he was ruthlessly efficient, and had proved multiple times that he was not above lying if he deemed it necessary to achieve his aim. More than that, the urgent tightness of Tony’s jaw bothered him—Tony really believed the woman was in danger, and not the true threat. But she’d come this far on the train, and they couldn’t attract that kind of attention or risk getting stuck underground or on the bridge. A car was out too, for the same reason—they would either be intercepted, or the drug would wear off and they’d be in an enclosed space with a woman who’d downed two agents—fobbits and rookies, yes, but still trained agents—and broken through a plate-glass window to escape. Still, Clint was not crazy about the idea of Tony carrying her back to the Tower by air. “What if she wakes up? She’ll freak, and fight you, and you’ll drop her.”

Tony’s smirk was incredibly watered-down and weak, but Clint gave him points for at least trying. “Superhero code, birdbrain. Iron Man would never drop a girl.”

“I want answers.”

“I know. I know none of this makes any sense, but I need your help right now. She needs your help right now,” Tony said, looking down at the woman’s still face. “She has no idea how much danger she’s in, and it’s my fault. Help me fix it.”

Clint looked at the woman one more time, then raised his eyes to Tony’s and nodded. “Okay. What do you need me to do?”

Tony gave Clint a rueful smile. “Forgive me, basically.”

Clint was puzzled, but only for a second. Then he waved his hands in front of him as though he would ward Tony off. “No. No way.”

“I’m recalibrating it as we speak,” Tony soothed. “JARVIS, twenty-five percent potency.”

“ ** _Very good, sir_**.”

“It is _not_ very good,” Clint said. “It is _very very bad_ , and _no_.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Tony said. “If that. Come on, Clint. Help me.” He glanced at the woman in his arms, still unconscious, her quiet, lovely face. “Help her.”

“I hate you,” Clint hissed, gritting his teeth. “OK. You’d better know what you’re doing, shellhead.”

“Of course not. Why, do I sound like I do?” Tony simply grinned. “Cheer up. Before you know it, you’ll be in my med lab with a front row seat. You’ll get your answers.”

“Just _do_ it already,” Clint growled. “And _don’t fucking drop her_ , or Steve will kill you, and so help me God Nat and I will help him.”

“I told you. If that happens, _I’ll_ help him.” Tony’s real smile flared into bright light on his face. “You’re a real team player, Clint.” 

“Yeah, yeah, fu—”

Carefully supporting the woman in his arms, Tony opened the hand facing Clint and flexed his fingers, then angled his wrist sharply downward, the small muzzle on his gauntlet popping up like a hellish magic trick beneath the blue of the woman’s suit. There was barely a sound—something like a silencer muffling the sound of a gunshot. 

Clint had been sedated before, but in his experience you never got used to it. He hoped Tony’s blend was a smoother ride, but he knew the truth—he was going to wake up sick and disoriented, and it was going to suck. He didn’t remember dropping back to his knees, but he must have, because he was tipping forward from the lower height. The concrete was rough against his cheek. Everything felt so heavy.

The last thing he heard before he let the drugs roll him like a dark wave was Tony barking, “Pepper, get Bruce. Tell him to get my med lab ready—we’ve got company. Tell the receptionists that if anyone gets upstairs before I give express permission, they’ll be fired faster than they can say ‘star-spangled man with a plan’, and they’ll never work on this _planet_ again if I have anything to say about it. I mean it, Pep. I don’t care if it’s Coulson, Fury or my own goddamn father come across time from the 1940s too. No one gets upstairs before I say so. Got it?” 

Then the faceplate slid down with a metallic _clink_ , the thrusters fired, and he was on his way, although Clint did not miss his lower, slower flight pattern, so as not to jar his unconscious passenger. The sacrificial Hawkeye took that sight with him as his leaden eyelids gave up the fight for now, looking forward to the front-row seat to the answers Tony had promised, even if he knew someone who deserved it far more.

**

That someone was currently living—if you could call it that; Steve certainly didn’t, not when he was under cover this deep and New York seemed a world and a lifetime away—forty klicks from the modern Russian border, in the small village of Keiskva, in the shadow of a castle far older than the Soviet era cement-block apartment building that housed his flat. 

It should have made him happier that some parts of the world hadn’t changed as much since the ice, but it didn’t. There was wi-fi, and a cellular signal, but it wasn’t as bright or as loud or as neon as the other parts of the world that had seemed to scream at his senses when he’d first come back to wakefulness. It was far more quiet here, and he was mildly surprised to realize that he was wishing for noise, and for what he’d come to regard as normalcy.

The apartment building was filled with people from all over Europe who had been brought in to help with the “restoration” work of the castle here in Keiskva. Steve—or “Solvig”, as his papers said, something that annoyed him to no end—shared the space with a local who preferred to spend the evenings at the local bars with his girlfriend. This was beneficial, as Steve had the place largely to himself.

Well, mostly to himself—an hour past sunset, the swaying click of heels on the linoleum outside heralded the arrival of Natasha. Steve had hated this part of the plan from the outset, but Natasha had insisted it would look weirder if they hadn’t done it this way. They’d met up in the market, far from the castle site, making sure to do so in public, while he was with other co-workers. They’d had what the movies these days called the “meet-cute”, and let everyone think what they would. He still wasn’t crazy about the plan, but neither of them had run up any red flags as of yet, so he grudgingly had to admit Natasha had likely been right. 

It was still a grudging admittance, though—he hated lying and false pretense. Natasha never missed an opportunity to tell him he was terrible at it, and right lousy at deep cover work. Steve didn’t argue with her—this whole spy thing was for the birds. He had wanted to send Clint in his place, arguing that a sniper would be of more use than a soldier.

A key in the lock interrupted his woolgathering, and he muttered a mild curse as he realized the pot he’d put on the stove was boiling over. As he turned down the gas jet, he heard Natasha’s honey-in-shadow tone call out a rather convincing, “ _дорогой_ ”.

She’d used that butterscotch voice, never sweeter or thicker than when she spoke her native tongue, to help him improve his Russian to the point of at least speaking it half as well as he understood it, and his jaw set in a hard line at the pet name she had chosen for him. He finished righting the burners and draped the dish towel over his shoulder before turning his attention to the rest of the meal.

It wasn’t just the pet name. He’d grown out his beard to help his cover and it itched; the soap he used here made his skin feel tight, and he’d be damned if the water didn’t still taste like it did back in 1941. Everything about this place made him itch, all except one—the food he could get at the market. The problem was, even that small creature comfort reminded him of the last time he’d been here with a spy…and a sniper, and a team of fifteen soldiers…

He shook the memories away, turning the chicken over in the cast-iron pan and reaching for the butter that he insisted be kept at room temperature.

For someone who looked as good and moved as well in high heels as Natasha did, she hurled them into the corner almost as soon as she arrived at the apartment, without fail, before going into the back room to change out of whatever slinky day dress she’d worn in the castle. Steve heard the slide and bang of the shoes hitting the wall and felt a sneaking sense of relief, knowing she would also pull off the brunette wig she wore to cover her rather distinctive red hair. He hated Natasha’s wig. It wasn’t just the style—soft waves rolling to her chin—but the color, the rich chestnut color. It reminded him all too much of hair he’d fantasized of burying his face in while he held the woman it belonged to close and let the rest of the world drift away. 

They had settled into an easy routine, and it wasn’t hard to fool people into thinking a solid friendship was something far more than it was, given the human race’s obsession with sex. Steve had never questioned the depth of Natasha’s relationship with Clint—had had never had to. She had made it very clear one night he, fighting insomnia, had come upon her in the infirmary with a pan, a stitch kit and what he and his commandos had called “lead diggers”. For the first time since they’d met, he’d used what the other Avengers jokingly referred to as “The Captain’s Voice” when he wasn’t in uniform. 

Natasha had tried to protest that she had the situation well in hand, adjusting the mirror to start manipulating her arm and see if she could get a visual on her objective. Steve had frowned, gone to the freezer and fetched one of Tony’s best bottles of vodka, pointing a commanding finger at her and ordering “sit down, shut up and have that”. Unlike him, she could still get drunk, which was about the only thing he’d ever want to trade places with her over.

Still, she killed more than half the bottle in a handful of swigs while he worked, remaining silent until the bullet had landed in the kidney pan with a “plink”. It was only when he had disinfected the wound and begun stitching it closed that she had started to talk. “ _Fucking snipers. How I hate the fucking snipers_.”

He had pointed out that her normal partner was in fact a sniper, and she had given him a withering look before grumbling, “ _Barton is a hunter, not a sniper. There’s a difference_.”

It was semantics to Steve, but he had listened as she’d spoken, mildly surprised by her eloquence in expressing that snipers were just assassins without the stones to do the work close. How a hunter made a moral call, whereas a sniper was simply a bullet—a tool of death.

“ _That’s poetic for a woman half sauced_ ,” he’d teased.

“ _Takes one to know one_ ,” she’d slurred. 

He’d chuckled. “ _You’re too drunk to even insult right. I’m sober as a judge, and the serum changed a lot about me, but I’ve always been a fella_.” 

It had been the first time he had ever heard Natasha Alianova Romanoff laugh—her real laugh, not the one she used on her marks. They had built on that moment, little by little, ever since—she trying in vain to get him more acclimated to the modern world and modern people, and he trying to get her to see that not everyone was running a game.

The food was nearly ready by the time she finally came through the kitchen door, and when he turned to look at her memory and fantasy collided before him and the only shield he could throw up was a scowl. She’d kept the wig on, damn it, and the soft waves framed lips as red as the ledger she had running in her head.

She cooed in that Russian purr, “ _Тебе не нравится, дорогая_?”

He put all his fury and grief into one word: “ _Nein_.” Intellectually, he knew it was not her fault—none of it was her fault—but he was not in the mood to play. Nat at least had the good sense to not push the line, and for bonus points, she picked up almost immediately on what was bothering him—she began to pull pins out of the synthetic hair, carefully peeling up her lace before she slid her wig cap off. Her hair was wrapped in braids, which she left in, but she placed the wig gently aside before moving towards him, taking the dish towel from his shoulder. Wiping most of the lipstick off on it, she pressed her mouth down on the side of his collar, smearing the remainder of the waxy product against skin and fabric. 

The first time she had done that, Steve had jumped as though he’d been wearing a shock collar, then furiously ripped his shirt off to change. However, after Natasha explained that it was simply to further the illusion, he grudgingly allowed it, but never stopped tensing when she got too close. He didn’t like it when she pushed physical boundaries too far, and he’d _told_ her that, damn it. 

He was fond of Natasha for herself, but if he were being truly honest, he was also fond of her for being the other side of the coins he’d paid so long ago. She drove him crazy trying to set him up with every woman with a pulse he’d met since getting out of the ice. He had no designs in that direction, and he wasn’t certain he ever would; he had made peace with it. 

Okay, well, fine. He hadn’t really made peace with it. But as he’d confided once—and only once, to Sam Wilson, in an incredibly vulnerable moment—that once you saw paradise, you wouldn’t want to settle for Perth Amboy. 

He just wished Nat would take her own advice now and then. In his experience, you could tell how happy someone was in their relationship by how hard they tried to fix up their single friends, and the one always trying to get you to meet new people was usually just trying to get you in bed with someone so they wouldn’t feel so guilty about all the sheets they'd seen. 

But Natasha was comprised of jigsaw pieces; that was her trade, and few people seemed to have picked up on the fact that it was a survival tactic for her—anyone who’d spent their formative years being conditioned, wiped, ordered, took pieces with them as they moved from mission to mission, crisis to crisis, experience to experience. And if Steve hadn’t known better, he would have sworn some of Natasha’s pieces had been lifted from the two people he’d loved best in the world, the two people whose loss had broken his heart—Peggy Carter and Bucky Barnes 

Peggy, with her commitment to honesty, no matter how painful for the listener, for her take-no-prisoners attitude; Peggy who hadn't suffered fools gladly and assholes not at all; Peggy who could school anyone in the room on code, espionage, infiltration, hand-to-hand. Bucky, with that tongue-in-cheek, devil-may-care swagger that was as like to charm their way out of a situation as fight it out; Bucky with his incredible talents and obvious skill; Bucky who, just like Natasha, had used his own version of protective coloring to hide his steel-trap mind and tender heart. For being the same kind of person as much as for these sweet, faint reminders, like a whiff of perfume or cologne on a coat he hadn’t worn in months, Steve would always value Natasha, would always have her back. She was like some weird little sister that he didn’t know he had wanted, that he occasionally had to patch bullet holes in, while she tried to set him up with some random secretary. She was so like them, but she was not them, and they were still hell and gone from Coney Island and the rest of that life he had left behind in the ice. 

As far as he knew, anyway.

**

Waking up felt like swimming up through thick, deep sludge. Everything held the scent of blood, and he tasted metal in his mouth.

“You said fifteen minutes, you asshole,” Clint groaned before he could stop himself, trying to lift eyelids that felt like they were stuck together. Luckily for Clint, as it would have blown his and Tony’s makeshift cover immediately instead of in an hour or two, it came out so garbled that neither of the men watching over him caught it. It felt obscene to turn his head, like the bones would slide around, but he did anyway. 

Riding in a helicopter, even a Stark helicopter, was basically like being inside a vibrating bubble. It was not helping the muzziness he was still fighting off, but the sight of his rescuers, while not unexpected, was even worse.

“Agent Barton. So nice of you to join us,” Nick Fury said flatly. 

“Reunited and it feels so gooooood,” Clint crooned; this was half the sedative trying to keep him in its rubbery, pliant grip, and half petulant fuckery, which was his normal M.O. for dealing with Nick.

“Cut the crap, Barton. Where’s the woman? Where’s Stark? We sent him to back you up, and instead it’s looking like he put you down.”

“Like the mongrel dog I am,” Clint agreed, trying gingerly to sit up. He felt like he was running a fever; heat was rising from his scalp in waves as his system fought to dump the drug any way it could. “God, I hate that tranq shit.”

“Start talking, Barton,” Phil Coulson said from his other side. “We land in five, and I want to know what we’re walking into.”

“Thanks for the evac, boys, but I can’t really tell you that much,” Clint said, cursing that he and Tony had had no time to decide on a cover story. “I caught up with her where you found me, at the Captain America statue in Prospect Park. She seemed confused, but not physically disoriented. She didn’t attack me. She asked me about the statue, and I told her about the dedication ceremony they had for it. That’s all we talked about. When I saw Stark, I figured you’d sent him to back me, so naturally he caught me off guard when he knocked me out. If they were gone when you showed up, then you already know more than I do.” This was a lie, but a small one. He hoped they didn’t catch on to the fact that Tony had diluted the drug for him, or that Tony had actually sedated the woman ten to fifteen minutes before Clint. His job right now was to stall; Tony could handle the rest. 

Fury scowled. “Remind me why we keep you on the payroll, Barton. You seem to have a knack for letting people get the drop on you.”

Clint bared his teeth. “You called me in on my night off to track someone, and I tracked her. I found her. She didn’t take me out, Stark did, so take it up with him, but don’t bitch to me. I did my part of the job. You don’t want me to bloodhound for you, no skin off my ass. I would have had no problem eating pizza and watching hockey tonight, like I originally planned.” He rolled his eyes, which caused the interior of the chopper to do a barrel roll in his vision and he immediately cursed it for a bad idea. “I bet Darcy and Lucky didn’t even leave me a slice.”

“Stark isn’t answering his comm,” Coulson said as they began the descent. “Do you know anything about that?”

“How many times do I have to say it? Read my lips: he showed up and spilled me on my ass with a tranquilizer. I don’t even know why he did that, unless it’s belated revenge for me blue-shelling him in MarioKart the last time we all played. How am I supposed to know where he is or why he isn’t answering his comm?”

“Looks like he blue-shelled _you_ tonight, Barton,” Coulson said, and while his sunglasses were on and his expression was neutral, Clint almost smiled. Everyone liked Phil, even if he had to play lap-dog to Fury more than any of them cared for. 

They had touched down, and the blades of the chopper were already slowing; Clint hoped Tony had had enough time to put whatever defenses he wanted in place. But as he jumped down to the rooftop landing pad, he saw that Tony had already put his best defense and strongest offense in their way.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Pepper Potts called over the noise of the slowing blades and the high wind, striding towards the chopper with her clipboard in hand and a million dollar smile on her face. “How can I assist you this evening?”

**

Natasha was surprised that she was the more restless of her team on this particular op. Normally, Steve was the one who strode in, shield at the ready, leading the charge, while she was perfectly content with subterfuge and the prolonged chess game, move by methodical move. 

But this time—perhaps because of the small piece of information she had gotten and then been unable to properly fit into the jigsaw puzzle of her life with the Avengers and her partnership with Steve—she felt restless, wishing she could hurry things along, but her pragmatic training not allowing her to be reckless. 

Steve had gone in first, in his guise of mason. Natasha had been initially concerned that his odd mood might cause him to slip, but he had justified her defense of him; in fact, he had pursued his objectives with fervent single-mindedness, and no one questioned the fair-haired, broad-shouldered mason as he dug steadily at the old foxhole entrances, the ones that needed to be “sealed”. Not even his immense strength was commented on--unless it was in passing by the secretaries, all a-flutter over the handsome contractor. 

Now, as he plated their meal, she hit the disk on the necklace she wore that activated the sound mufflers they had placed in the apartment, drifting back into the living room to turn the radio and the television on. Anyone listening in would only hear the former, thanks to the sound mufflers, while the latter was on mute so the cool blue light flickered against the drawn curtains and under the door that led to the kitchen, which she closed behind her as she returned to him. She grabbed drinks and set the table, watching him with glass-green eyes. There were some days when Steve was in a very good mood, easy to be around; other days he was all business. Perhaps a year ago, she might not have cared how her partner felt on a mission, but since the battle of New York and getting to know him better, she had to admit there were now at least two people in the world that she could count among those she trusted. 

Which didn’t mean she might ever forgive Steve for doubling the number, but as with Clint, she’d found herself a sister in a dysfunctional family of orphaned brothers. Clint was more jovial about it (“A carnie, a Russkie and a W-M- _Daaaaamn this guy is old_ walk into a high-rise—“ he’d begin, the joke never reaching completion before Natasha or Steve himself cuffed Clint), but Natasha was content to feel its edges, test its boundaries, search it for structural weaknesses. And every day, Steve surprised her by yielding none.

She could admit that this was easily the grumpiest Steve had ever been about pretending they were a couple. She herself wasn’t exactly comfortable anymore with using him as a decoy, first and foremost being that she hated the idea of only being taken seriously in relation to a man—if she were someone's wife, girlfriend, sister, lover.  Like most people, Natasha just wanted to be taken seriously for who she really was, and she had spent enough years trading on looks and femininity to be over it.  She had never come right out and discussed it with Steve, but they were good partners; he knew that she appreciated being valued for her skill and not her body, and was grateful for a life in which she could use her talents in a way she felt befit them.  

Slightly less important was that Rogers was, in every sense of the word, the  _worst_  decoy.  

She had learned that on an undercover op in which she and Steve had been posing as an engaged couple.  He'd looked adorably dorky in his civvies--hooded sweatshirt under a canvas jacket, nondescript baseball cap and non-prescription eyeglasses--and then had proceeded to treat her like she had a communicable disease.  Every time she had touched him--a hand on his back, threading her arm through his--he had jumped as though she had burned him.  His color had alternated from the pale anxiety of anticipating their cover being blown to shy pink any time she touched him.  She had reflected afterward that she had been so irritated by his lack of chill that the kiss had been a sort of revenge.  

Not an unpleasant errand, of course.  Steve Rogers was a very attractive man--and she'd had to think quickly to hide that handsome face from a pursuer who would have been able to recognize them.  So she'd slid a hand behind Steve's strong neck, yanked his head down and planted one on him.  In another situation, the square press of strong teeth just behind his soft lips would have been sensual, but Natasha had been aware even as it was happening that he was clamping his mouth shut in surprise and possibly an effort to forestall her kiss.  

" _You know_ ," she'd said with mock irritation later on, " _ **most**  men don't freak out and give themselves the cootie shot when I kiss them_."

" _I did not freak out_ ," Steve had argued.  " _You just caught me off-guard.  You should have warned me, and I didn't even know the cootie shot was still a **thing**_."

" _It is, but anti-vaxxers are lobbying against it in favor of herd cootie immunity_ ," Natasha had quipped dryly.  " _Was that the first time since the 1940s?_ "

" _I got it in 1924, from Mary Ellen Moffat.  I should still be immune_ ," Steve had shot back playfully, and Natasha had laughed.

" _Not the **shot** , Spangles_."

Steve had quieted; he'd been teasing and had known what she had meant, but he had realized his efforts to push her off with a joke had failed.  

" _No_ ," he'd said sulkily.  " _I'm ninety-five, not dead_."

Natasha had arched a brow.  The pouting tone might have been because he was lying and she'd called him on it...but she thought it was in fact because it  _hadn't_  been the first kiss since the 1940s.  And he hadn't been happy about that.

Now, in Russia, seeing the tightness of Steve’s bearded jaw, watching him scratch at his chin and grumble about the itch when normally he could withstand torture, pain and intense physical strain without complaint, seeing the traitorous brightness in his weary eyes while her own gaze drifted towards her discarded chestnut wig, her mind recalled her impromptu sleuthing with Tony, Bruce and Clint before they’d departed the States. She was piecing together whose kiss Steve was wanting, had been wanting for as long as he could remember.

Or, who'd left the kiss on his lips that the new kisses had threatened to bury—the kiss that time had not erased.

“Where are you?” Just because she was sympathetic to his pain didn’t mean she wouldn’t go straight for the jugular. She knew there were definitely times that Steve appreciated that, but the narrowed blue eyes and grimly set jaw told her this was not one of them.

“You going to tell me what you found today?” he deflected.

“It doesn’t matter what I found, or if I found anything. You’re not here.”

Steve put down the plates harder than he needed to; they clanged slightly. “I’m just remembering the last time I was anywhere near here.”

She would have smacked Clint, berated Tony, called Bruce on it straight out. But the Widow was well aware that not all men could be handled in the same manner, and Steve in particular was a special case. “Oh good. I was worried that you were still sulking over your fake ID.”

He groaned, but not like he was angry; it was more the tone of an exasperated child, sinking into his chair. “Seriously. Champion? You had to give me a dog’s name?”

“Barton wanted to name you Glücklich.” She smiled beatifically.

“You’re not as funny as you think you are, Romanoff.”

“Yes I am. I’m hilarious. You’re just too old to see it.” She was already cutting into the chicken as the spinach and cheese melted out of the stuffed breast, and her smile went from teasing to genuine. Steve was far fussier than Clint over certain things, but when it came to running a job together, she definitely ate better with Steve. 

That actually got a bit of a chuckle from him, because he knew the truth. He was certain only Fury and Barton knew it outside of himself, but he’d picked up on it after New York when he saw how well she healed on her own. Not as fast as him, but not as slow as Stark, and that was answer enough. “Not that much older.”

“A lady wouldn’t tell.”

“A lady wouldn’t get lipstick all over my shirts.”

“Different decade. Different kind of lady.”

Steve tilted his head slightly, truly considering her, and for the first time all night his smile was affectionate, almost wistful. “Maybe not so different,” he murmured as he started in on his own meal.

Natasha knew whose lipstick he was wishing was smeared on his collar. She had seen it, in black and white, in the lid of his compass, and wondered what color it had been on the lady’s mouth.

**

Across the nine realms the flash of light arced like emerald steel across the golden eyes of the gatekeeper. Deep rich tones, like liquid fur, resonated in the echoing hollow of the ruined bi-frost. 

“That... is not supposed to happen.” Something had crossed the parallel of possibility and probability, rending the fabric of space and time, but as the universe was vast and endless; it had its own way of healing the wound as quickly as it had been ripped open, and the gatekeeper felt more than watched the wound close like water flowing together, smoothing over as if it had never been.

Turning to the entrance of Himinbjörg, he undid the leather that held the sacred token of his station to his person and raising it to his lips. The robust horn Gjallarhorn echoed across the burning rainbow bridge, and he waited for it to bring forth whoever would answer its call, in hopes he would be able to summon the prince and seek audience with the All-Father, or perhaps the Queen, for it was unsure if this had been an act of fate, magic or the most unpredictable of all factors in regards to lesser beings…

…coincidence.

**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WickedKitteh is responsible for Steve and Natasha in Germany; I simply tweaked the sections a bit. Her German and Russian are impeccable; any mistakes are mine.
> 
>  _Дорогая_ : dear, my dear (Russian)
> 
>  _Тебе не нравится, дорогая?_ : You don’t like, my dear? (Russian)
> 
>  _Nein_ : no (German)
> 
>  _Solvig_ : Champion (German)
> 
>  _Glücklich_ : Happy (German)
> 
> Ilse Koch was a real person—the She-Wolf of the S.S., the Bitch of Buchenwald, and no, I did not make that up, nor did I make up what Koch was accused of and imprisoned for. For you retro gamers out there, Bathory Mengele, the Butcheress in the original _BloodRayne_ game for the PS2, is based heavily on Koch, despite her being named after Elisabeth Bathory and Joseph Mengele, who were just as vicious and evil as she was. While it is a harrowing bedtime story, I suggest knowing about it to drive the point home that there is no limit to the evil men—and women—are capable of, and that it is up to us to decide what sort of people we want to be and what our legacy will be. I suppose, in a way, standing against that sort of evil is exactly what the Avengers’—and this—story is all about. 
> 
> Comments are welcome, I could use the company tonight. It's--Well, it's been a long day.
> 
> Cheers,  
> Peggy


End file.
